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The Physics of Idealism 



By EDGAR LENDERSON HINMAN 



The Physics of Idealism 



A Thesis Presented 



TO THE 



University Faculty ol Cornell University 



FOR THE 



Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 



BY 



EDGAR LENDERSON HINMAN 

II 



LINCOLN, NEB.: 

State Journal Company, Printers 

1006 



AW 



Cornell Univ. Lib. Exchange 

MAR 28 l^Ok* 




TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Intkoductio: 5 

Chapter I. Kant's Metaphysic of Nature 17 

A. Its Significance for Idealistic Speculative Physics, IT 

B. Outline of the Metaphysic of Nature 18 

C. Critical Analysis 20 

Chapter II." Schelling's Construction of Matter 38 

A. Transition to Schelling 38 

B. The Metaphysical Point of Departure of the Phi- 

losophy of Nature 40 

- C. The Problem and Method of the Philosophy of 

Nature 40 

D. Relation of the Idea of Matter to the Theory of 

Perception 52 

E. Matter as a Force- Product 50 

F. Gravitation as a Systematizing Factor 09 

Chapter III. Conclusion 78 



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INTRODUCTION. 

In discussing the attitude of idealism towards the meta- 
physics of natural science one is embarrassed at the outset 
by the indefiniteness of the term idealism. Systems which are 
called idealistic differ radically in character, as do those of 
Leibniz and Berkeley. Many of them exhibit features which 
are supposed to be characteristic of realism. Yet the distinc- 
tion between realism and idealism is a time-honored one. and 
cannot be without significance. It is therefore important to 
determine with some precision in what this distinction con- 
sists. 

Two criteria often used to make the distinction appear to 
the writer to be of very inferior value. According to one, an 
idealist is a thinker who denies that the external world and 
the objects of knowledge possess a reality independent of the 
perception or thought by which they form a part of his con- 
sciousness. Their esse is pereipL and in addition to their 
reality as perception no sort of existence can be ascribed to 
them. The realist, on the other hand, urges that things exist 
by themselves, and that afterwards a knowing mind may hap- 
pen to perceive them — or it may not, the incident being of no 
great significance. 

There is no doubt much excuse for resting the distinction 
upon the denial of an objective world independent of con- 
sciousness. The general contention of idealism, both in Eng- 
land and Germany, has been that the reality of the object con- 
sists in nothing else than being perceived. Except as related 
to consciousness, it is urged, no meaning can be ascribed to 
objectivity. With Berkeley insisting that the esse of things 
is nothing but their percipi, and with Fichte striving to show 
how the Ego constructs the world by its own spontaneity, the 

(5) 



6 THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 

foregoing characterization has seemed just and has won wide 
acceptance. 

The extreme subjectivism which this statement of the 
idealistic position entails is a matter of regret. Wherever it 
is dominant idealism fights at a marked disadvantage. The 
suppression of subjectivism has been the perennial struggle 
of the idealist. 

The idealist does not actually mean that the mind of the 
individual constructs for itself a field of consciousness which 
is its universe, and that the universe so known carries with it 
no implication or evidence of an existent reality external to 
the consciousness of the individual mind. He can no more 
dispense with such a reality than his opponent can dispense 
with the material world. It is the principle which makes 
the world a system, and causes the universe constructed by 
one mind to harmonize with that constructed by another. 
From the standpoint of the individual, this may be called an 
external world. It is not external to the mind, if by external 
we understand something opposed to the mind and distinct 
from it. On the contrary, for most forms of idealism this 
universal principle must be immanent in the mind, and may 
in this sense be called internal. It is external, however, in 
the sense that it involves immensely more than the conscious- 
ness of the single individual. Its sphere of activity lies 
largely outside the consciousness of the finite subject, and 
it is in this extra-mental sphere that we must find the ground 
and explanation of the cosmic order. 

Berkeley eliminates from his philosophy the material 
world, but he is able to do this only by calling to his assistance 
the mind of God. The perceptions of objects are aroused in 
the conscious subject by God. It is clear, therefore, that the 
existence in my mind of a given perception does involve some 
evidence of a universe external to myself. It implies the 
activity of God. When Berkeley urges that its esse is percipi 
and nothing more, he is impelled by a motive which he does 



THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 7 

not reallv understand or properly state. His real motive is 
to deny that subject and object are given in absolute dualism ; 
to assert that the two are given as differences in a common 
principle, and in the medium of mind-life. Epistemological 
necessities led him to accent the mental medium, and even to 
treat it as the perceptual act; but he did not rigorously and 
consistently restrict the entire reality of the object known to 
the perceptual product. Berkeley was concerned, it is true, 
more with the destructive argument against materialism, and 
gave only an imperfect development to the positive aspect of 
his system. Until this aspect is satisfactorily worked out. 
however. Dr. Johnson's refutation of Berkeleianism is in 
order, and the distrust with which the ordinary man regards 
idealism is sound and just. 

Fiehte apparently dispenses not only with the material 
world but also with the Divine mind, and regards the universe 
as the free creation of the Ego. As the system develops, how- 
ever, it becomes evident that Ego is only another name for 
Spirit, and that the mind of any particular man is but a 
small part of the Ego which creates the whole universe. The 
finite Ego is the same in its nature and life as the absolute 
Ego. but is less extensive. "All individuals are included in 
che one great unity of pure spirit.'' * This tendency to go be- 
yond the finite Ego to an absolute Ego appears more dis- 
tinctly in Schilling's early efforts to supplement and perfect 
the system of Fiehte, but it is apparent in the worts of 
Fiehte himself. As with Berkeley, so with Fiehte, the spirit- 
ual principle to which we are forced to refer the cosmic order 
is in large measure beyond the consciousness of the finite 
mind. Of one texture with the finite thinker, it is by no means 
a mere phenomenon to the human percipient. 

It is an inadequate and unfair definition of idealism, then, 
which makes its essence consist in maintaining that the ex- 
ternal world has no reality farther than that of being per- 

1 Dignity of Man, Eng. translation by Kroeger, p. 336. 



8 THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 

ceived. Some kind of external reality must be admitted if we 
are to regard the universe as anything more than a disordered 
series of irrational mental states. Idealism differs from real 
ism, not by denying the necessity of assuming for the explana 
tion of perception a principle which transcends the individual 
mind, but by certain deeper criteria of which this is but an 
imperfect epistemological expression. 

Equally unsatisfactory is the second criterion to be men- 
tioned. Some men would consider any philosophy realism 
which holds that there are beings distinct from the mind, and 
that these beings act causally upon the mind to produce 
perception. On this view the realities might be of the same 
nature as the mind, so that all existence is spiritual; yet as 
a truly causal interaction is admitted, any individual musl 
grant that his perceptions are caused by realities external t<» 
himself. The monadology of Leibniz becomes realism, then, 
as soon as we admit that the monads have windows. 

Much evidence can be found in the writings of Fichte, Schel 
ling, and other German idealists, to show that they regarded 
the explanation of perception by causality as being a criterion 
distinguishing realism from idealism. Fichte says "The true 
question in dispute between dogmatic realism and dogmatic 
idealism is, therefore, in what manner shall we explain repre- 
sentation? Through the conception of causality! asserts 
realism. Through the conception of substantiality! asserts 
idealism." 1 By substantiality Fichte means to indicate the 
view which regards the non-Ego as possessing no reality or 
efficiency except that which it receives from the Ego. 

But a further examination shows that we cannot satis- 
factorily distinguish the two philosophical tendencies accord- 
ing as they do or do not explain perception by the causality 
of something external to the percipient mind. For in the 
first place, upon this basis even Berkeley, the high-priest of 
idealism, would figure as a realist. With Leibniz, also, al- 
i Fichte. Science of Knowledge Kroeg-er's translation, p. 133. 



THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 1) 

though our perceptions at any given moment arise by virtue of 
the spontaneity of the mind, they all trace back ultimately to 
the causality of God. In the second place, the real import 
of the change introduced by the post-Kantian idealism con- 
sists not in the fact that it has destroyed the conception of 
a causal relation obtaining between the individual mind and 
its environing universe, but rather in the fact that it has taken 
the causal conception up into the higher idea of an organic 
system. It is true that the relation in which one member 
of this system stands to another is a teleological one, by virtue 
of the membership of all individuals in the common plan; 
and the idealistic theory of knowledge is therefore concerned 
to show that the cognitive relation is not mechanical simply, 
out that subject and object mutually imply one another 
within the teleological unity of an organic Avhole. Could this 
De successfully denied, I judge that idealism would fail. It 
is necessary to show that the relation of the mind to its 
environing universe is not simply mechanical, barely causal, 
out that it is teleological. As soon, however, as we have 
taken the causal idea up into this higher thought of syste- 
matic relation, we can give it its relative truth. Subject and 
object, or rather sensation and stimulus, are in relations 
which are not merely causal, in the pluralistic or mechanical 
sense; it does not follow, however, that the causal judgment 
has no applicability to the situation. On the other hand, it 
may as fairly be applied there as in any other relation. But 
in any relation it gives only an abstract and superficial ren- 
dering of the true connection of individual facts within a uni- 
verse. "The truth of mechanism is teleology. " 

According to the modified view of causality now under dis- 
cussion, a cause does not act directly upon its effect, but the 
causal action is mediated through the world-ground. It is 
by virtue of the immanence of the world-ground in the object, 
and by its free activity, rather than by the direct transeunt 
action of the mechanical cause, that an orderlv effect issues. 



10 THE PHYSICS OP IDEALISM. 

Perceptions arise in the mind, then, not by the direct causal 
action of objects, but by the ideal immanence in the mind 
of the world-ground as absolute Ego. But as this is what all 
causal action really implies, we are as well justified in saying: 
that our perceptions are caused by something other than the 
mind as in saying that physical changes are caused by other 
physical changes. The refusal of German idealism to explain 
perception by means of causality, then, amounts to no more 
than an assertion that all such causal action must take place 
within the jurisdiction of one all-comprehending world-ground 
and must be guided and controlled at every turn by the spon 
taneity of this absolute Spirit. 

Having rejected as unsatisfactory criteria of idealism both 
the denial of an external world and the denial of a causal re- 
lation between the finite mind and the universe, it is necessary 
to go deeper in order to discover its essential marks. 

Idealism can best be characterized, I think, by subordinat- 
ing the purely epistemological standpoint to the metaphysical 
one. Dropping for the moment the question of the origin of 
perceptions, we should ask what sort of a world-principle ideal- 
ism contemplates. The essential divergence from realism, and 
the grounds for the epistemological theses will then appear in 
their proper correlation. 

Idealism is convinced, in the first place, that the world is 
t lie production of a unitary principle; a principle, moreover, 
which in a systematic and orderly way bears upon its bosom a 
vast multiplicity of detaiL This idea of systematic unity finds 
its best analogical expression in the conception of an organ- 
ism. The world is an organic unity, in such wise that the ideal 
of the whole is immanent in every part. It is true that the 
analogy of an organism, if taken with utmost strictness, must 
after a time break down, but it serves to illustrate in some 
degree the relation which individuals can bear towards an ideal 
system-founding universal. It is only when we study the 
deeper implications of the mind-life that we find this relation- 



THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 11 

ship displayed in a way which is more than analogical and 
which does not break doAvn when applied to the Real. The 
world is a system-bearing unity, then, to which the deeper re- 
lations found in the mind-life furnish the key. This monistic 
bent is both logically and historically involved in idealism 
as a philosophical tendency. A pluralism which admits no 
higher unity within the sphere of a Being which is truly one 
cannot claim to be an idealism. Against such a view we find 
the idealist arguing that absolutely discrete entities cannot 
interact, and that therefore no universe can be formed by 
pluralism. And since they cannot interact, they cannot act 
causally upon the mind. It follows that even if a multitude 
of discrete elements existed we could not know it. 

The philosophy of Leibniz illustrates the significance of the 
conception of an immanent totalizing ideal to which the ac- 
tivities of the world forces and the orderliness of nature are 
referred. For Leibniz, the possibility of interaction between 
monads depended upon the creating and adjusting power of 
God. Only because God ordains that two monads shall act 
in unison do they exhibit the relations which we refer to in- 
teraction. In fact, however, no dynamical relations exist be- 
tween the two. Leibniz holds, it is true, that the apparent 
interaction has been preestablished for all time, and that the 
further mediation of God is no longer necessary in the sense 
in which it was required at the beginning. This point, how- 
ever, is not essential to the present reflection. The important 
consideration is that the monads, regarded as independent 
entities, cannot influence one another, and the possibility of 
forming them into a universe depends upon the all-including 
monad, God. The philosophy of Leibniz is therefore, so far 
as this criterion goes, a true idealism. But the preestablish- 
ment at the creation of all causal events proved too vigorous 
:t doctrine for his successors. Accordingly, they admitted a 
truly dynamical interaction between the monads, an influence 
not mediated by Divine assistance. God became, then, a 



1/ 



12 THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 

necessity of thought, an Ens rationis, even an Ens realissUnum, 
"but no longer a concrete postulate to make possible physical 
change. Banished into the region of abstractions, with the 
world progressing successfully without him, the very existence 
of God came into serious question. Thus the transition was 
made from the idealism of Leibniz to the dogmatic realism 
which preceded Kant, merely by denying that interaction is 
mediated by the ideal influence of a monistic world-principle. 
The same presupposition is essential to the argument of 
Eichte and Schelling. The explanation of perception by ex- 
ternal causation they hold to be impossible. One could admit 
that the problem of knowledge cannot be solved by reducing 
cognition to a result of physical stimulation, but it is not so 
clear that no determinations of perception can be due to the 
way in which real things might act upon us. Upon careful 
search, however, we find the explanation of their thought in 
the repeated recurrence of passages like the following: "But 
further, these two activities [of the subject and of the object] 
cannot be absolutely opposed to one another, unless they are 
activities of one and the same identical subject. They cannot 
therefore be united in one and the same product, without a 
third which is the synthesis of the two." x The possibility of 
bringing together the finite Ego and the non-Ego, and of allow- 
ing them to mutually determine one another, rests upon the 
fact that the two are united within the absolute Ego. And 
in fact this is nothing more or less than the central doctrine 
of Kant's Critique of Pure Keason, that all science rests upon 
synthesis and all synthesis is within the transcendental unity 
of the constitutive category. All post-Kantian idealism, then, 
is foreordained to monism. A similar effect is produced in 
the Greek idealism by the Platonic doctrine of the concept. 
Berkeleianism is less developed in this respect, and has not 
thought out deeply the relations in which the individual mind 
stands to the world-ground. It has therefore failed to catch 

1 Schelling-, Sammtliche Werke, Abth. I, Bd. Ill, S. 440. 



THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 13 

the genuine logic of constructive idealism. Its argument for 
the mutual correlation of subject and object has put it upon 
a course, however, which justifies us in classifying it as ideal- 
ism, although crude and undeveloped. 

Upon the criterion here defended all forms of pluralism, 
however much they may insist that their plural elements are 
souls, must be classed as realism. Herbartian metaphysics 
accepts this designation. Lotze's extension of the Herbartian 
realism consists in adding to it the very feature which char- 
acterizes idealism, and is therefore a radical alteration. 

All idealism is monistic, inspired by the conception of a 
system-founding whole ideally immanent in the parts. It is. 
not practicable to say, of course, that all monism is idealistic, 
although it may very well be that all consistently thought out 
monism which attempts to define the conception of a concrete 
or system-founding universal will be so. It is therefore neces- 
sary, in order to secure a completed definition, to develop the 
further characteristics of idealism. 

Its second important characteristic consists in the fact that 
for idealism all knowledge, and indeed all forms of apprehen- 
sion of the Real, rest upon and presuppose idealization. That 
is, they rest upon the operation wij:tyn the finite consciousness 
of the ideal of the Universal, the Totality, bringing out the 
orderliness which is implied within experience. The content 
of this ideal is not derived by copying from finite sense feeling, 
but rests upon the autonomy of Mind itself. 

It is unnecessary to point out how this element, first in- 
troduced into philosophy in articulate form by Plato, has 
played a prominent part in all constructive idealism. Many 
forms in which the doctrine has been cast have been defective. 
Idealism does not need to hold to an a priori rational knowl- 
edge apart from experience; it does need to hold, so far as I 
can see, to the domination of an ideal universal in knowledge. 
Its theory of knowledge, then, can only be a theory of the way 
in which experience implies and exhibits the operation of this 
dominant universal. 



14 THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM., 

It is more important to point ont the connection of this 
epistemological criterion with the metaphysical one first men- 
tioned. The epistemological doctrine is rendered necessary, if 
the metaphysical one is to be maintained, because only through 
the idealism of finite consciousness can any knowledge be 
gained of a totalizing synthetic Universal, or any meaning be 
given to the conception. If all cognitive experience testified 
only of contingent phenomena, of physical facts in time and 
space, then there would be no evidence of an intelligible unity 
in the world. Indeed, we should then be forced to say that 
any unity which might exist in the world must, be unintel- 
ligible. But if knowledge involves the treatment of perceptual 
experience in the light of an ideal of unity and order tran- 
scending perception, then all cognitive experience testifies to 
the existence of spiritual order in the world. Every experience 
we have, every fact that we know, is so much experiental tes- 
timony of mind in the world. Unless we knew God we should 
not knowing anything. In brief, a dominant universal in the 
world carries with it a universal operative in knowledge; and 
the establishment of the universal operative in knowledge is 
the ground, and the only rational ground, for asserting the 
dominant universal in the world. 

This criterion has an adverse bearing upon any idealism 
founded upon sensationalism. The essential thing about sen- 
sationalism is its conception of thinking as copying sense data. 
The resulting denial of idealization in knowledge precludes the 
possibility of a perfected idealistic system on this basis, and 
drove Berkeley in his later years to Platonism. 

The third characteristic mark of idealism is its conviction 
that the ultimate import of the ideal operating in the finite 
consciousness is Beality itself. The ideal is the real, if you 
first define the ideal with sufficient breadth and depth. The 
perfect fruition of that intellectual and ethical idealization 
which autonomously reveals itself in the life of mind gives us 
our only intelligible interpretation of the category of Being 



THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 15 

or Reality. Throughout all our intellectual life we are judging 
some interpretations of experience to be relatively illogical 
and false, others to be relatively logical and true; and the 
basis or postulate of this procedure can only be our implicit 
recognition that Reality must be a coherent whole, such as 
would be presented in a perfectly organized and totalized ex- 
perience. By the very meaning of the category, then. Reality 
is the norm of the mind. This conception of the ontological 
predicate we are in fact using all the time, and we have no 
other conception of it which can be analyzed, denned, or freed 
from contradiction and absurdity. In particular, the meaning 
of the ontological predicate cannot be found in the sense of 
pressure or resistance. It is upon this point that the idealistic 
polemic against mere causality becomes in order. 

It is clear that this third thesis also is logically bound up 
with the fundamental view-point and tendency of idealism. 
We have said that reality is an organic or mind-] ike unity: 
that we know it to be so, because in every act of knowledge we 
are led by an organizing ideal. We require to add that this 
ideal presents the real ; otherwise our argument fails. 

Under this third criterion the philosophy of Leibniz falls 
-somewhat short of a genuine idealism. It infers from the in- 
dividual monad to the nature of other monads by analogy, 
rather than by the recognition of identity of principle. It does 
not say, Reality is known as the perfected Principle revealed 
in the idealism of my individual life. It says, Reality is known 
as like my individual will. It is true that the organic relation 
of part to whole, upon which the system of Leibniz turns, 
implies a deeper thought; but so far as thinkers who follow 
liim fall back upon the analogical inference from the individual 
to the transcendent they tend to lose this deeper thought. 

The three criteria here developed were satisfied by Greek 
thought, and by those philosophical developments through the 
ages which have drawn most inspiration from Plato. It is 
only in the speculation which followed Kant, however, that we 



16 THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 

can find in modern times a satisfactory and relatively inde- 
pendent development of idealism. It is only in post-Kantian_ 
speculation, and especially in the systems of Schelling and 
Hegel that the task of constructing a philosophy of natural 
science upon idealistic lines is fairly attacked. The success-, 
attained in this field has not generally gained a high rating. 
Subsequent thought has made some advance beyond them, but 
the present state of idealistic Naturphilosophie is not a matter 
of congratulation. The entire course of thought in this field 
has been largely determined by Schelling, and it is chiefly to 
his work, especially so far as it concerns speculative physirs,, 
that this monograph is devoted. 



THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 17 



CHAPTER I. 
Kant's metaphysic of nature. 

A. Its Significance for Idealistic Speculative Physics. 

A discussion of the problem which idealism has to treat in 
the philosophy of physics must take into consideration at the 
beginning the doctrines of Kant as set forth in his work on 
the Metaphysical Basis of the Natural Sciences. It is true that 
Kant himself is not a thoroughgoing and consistent idealist. 
For the metaphysic of nature, at any rate, the reality which 
lies at the basis of the material world is unknown. The 
Critical Philosophy is doubtless idealistic in spirit, yet it wants 
many of the characteristics which mark a genuine idealism. 
It may seem irrelevant, then, to begin a study of idealistic 
Naturphilosophie with a discussion of Kant's Metaphysic of 
Nature. 

The reasons which render such a course advisable, however, 
are cogent. Kant and his idealistic successors found them- 
selves confronted by much the same task. For both the ma- 
terial world, as a world of independent, self-existent realities, 
had vanished. That which was absolutely real bore no re- 
semblance to the matter which science conceived. The task 
arose, then, of explaining how the appearance of a material 
world subordinate to law should be maintained when nothiog 
analogous to it in reality existed. For the performance of this 
task the differing materials supplied by the different systems 
of metaphysics would suggest different methods. Historically, 
however, the methods adopted were not radically different. 
The main features of Kant's Metaphysical Basis of the 
Natural Sciences were adopted with slight change into the 
N at ur philosophic of Schelling, and through this channel its 
2 



18 THE PHYSIOS OF IDEALISM. 

influence was transmitted to subsequent idealistic speculation 
on nature. The chief task of Schelling was, not to improve 
upon the Kantian doctrine, but to work out more clearly its 
connection with idealistic philosophy. Much was added by 
Schelling, of course, but the spirit of the whole was deter- 
mined by Kant. For this reason an examination of the Meta- 
physical Basis of the Natural Sciences must form the begin- 
ning of a critical discussion of the subsequent speculative 
physics. 

B. Outline of the Metaphysic of Nature. 

The Critique of Pure Reason had shown that the world of 
experience is constituted for us by the synthetic activity of the 
transcendental unity of apperception, as it combines the mani- 
fold which is given through the forms of space and time. The 
material world, then, must depend entirely upon the applica- 
tion of the categories of the understanding to the manifold 
given through the form of the external sense, that is, in space. 
We are led to expect, therefore, that a metaphysic of nature 
should bring the phenomena of the external world into connec- 
tion with the categories of the understanding, showing spe- 
cifically what part each category plays in the construction of 
nature, and proving that on this hypothesis the material world 
would be constituted such as science knows it. 

It is doubtful if this task is successfully accomplished. 
Kant does attempt, however, to bring the phenomena into con- 
nection with the categories of the understanding. This is ac- 
complished by an artificial systematization of the mode of 
treatment. Matter is considered from four points of view, 
corresponding to the four classes of categories, quantity, qual- 
ity, relation, and modality. Under each of these headings 
three distinctions are made, which are identified with the 
three categories of the corresponding class. Now, since the 
understanding leads all other predicates pertaining to the 
nature of matter back to the one predicate of motion, which 



THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 19 

is the only one capable of affecting the senses, natural science 
is throughout a doctrine of motion. Therefore the first of the 
four divisions, phoronomy, treats of motion as a mere quan- 
tum; the second, dynamics, treats of it as an original moving 
force belonging to the quality of matter; the third, dynamics, 
deals with this quality as by its own reciprocal motion in 
relation; the fourth, phenomenology, considers matter with its 
motion as phenomenon of the external sense, or in reference to 
modality. In considering these it seems better to neglect 
Kant's order of treatment, and to deal at once with the second 
division, dynamics, which forms the core of the whole doctrine. 

Matter, for dynamics, is the movable so far as it fills space. 
To fill space means to resist everything movable which en- 
deavors to press into the space in question. This involves 
the capacity of offering resistance, a capacity which is related 
to the act as cause to effect. Now, what is this property upon 
which depends the capacity of matter to offer resistance? 
Some hold that it is the solidity of an existent substance, and 
that the very conception of such solidity carries with it that 
of resistance. This, however, is not the case. Only when 
there is attributed to that which occupies space a power of 
repelling that which approaches it does one comprehend how 
it involves a contradiction that one thing should penetrate 
into the space occupied by another. The penetration into 
space is a motion. It is diminished or destroyed by 
resistance. Nothing can diminish or destroy motion but an- 
other motion of the same movable in the opposite direction. 
This is proved in the phoronomy. Matter fills space, then, by 
causing another motion of the invading movable in the oppo- 
site direction. Now the cause of motion is a moving force. 
Not. therefore, by its mere existence, but by a special moving 
force, does matter occupy space. 

Only two moving forces in matter can be conceived. That 
by means of which a body may be the cause of the approach 
of others to itself is attractive force; that by means of which 



ZU THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 

it may be the cause of repelling others from itself is repulsive 
force. This latter is a force of expansion, and it is by the 
repulsive force of all its parts that matter fills space. This 
repulsive force must have a definite degree, beyond which 
smaller or larger degrees can be conceived to infinity. As 
expansive force is elasticity, all matter is originally and essen- 
tially elastic. Now matter can be compressed to infinity, 
because a force able to overcome its expansion can always be 
conceived; but, however great the compressing force, it can 
never be penetrated, that is, the space of its extension can 
never be entirely abolished, since that would require an in- 
finite compressing force, an impossibility. The expansive 
force here described increases in proportion to the degree of 
compression, and the impenetrability resulting may be called 
relative impenetrability resting upon the dynamical filling of 
space. The mathematical conception of impenetrability, ac- 
cording to which matter is really capable of no compression 
at all, would involve absolute impenetrability. The latter is 
nothing more than an occult quality. If we ask why one body 
cannot be penetrated by another, the only answer which this 
view gives is, because it was impenetrable. Repulsive force, 
however, does afford an explanation, since it gives a. concep- 
tion of an actual cause, in accordance with which the effect, 
resistance in space, may be accurately estimated. 

The infinite divisibility of matter has long been disputed. 
What, on the dynamical theory, does it mean to say that 
matter is divisible? Matter, that which is for itself movable 
in space, is substance. That is, it is the subject of all that in 
space which can be counted as belonging to the existence of 
things. Now, to decide the question of the infinite divisibility 
of matter, we have only to remember that matter is that which 
fills space and that space is mathematically divisible to in- 
finity. If it were not true that matter by its expansive force 
completely fills space, that no parts of space are vacant, the 
demonstration of the infinite divisibility of space would by 



THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 21 

no means establish the infinite divisibility of matter. In a 
space filled with matter, however, every part contains repul- 
sive force, able to drive back and move to a distance other 
forces. Hence every part of space filled with matter is mov- 
able in itself, and consequently separable from those remain- 
ing, as material substance, by physical division. Therefore 
matter, like the space it fills, is infinitely divisible. 

This conclusion seems to be at issue with the proof, given 
in the discussion of the second antinomy of pure reason, that 
every substance in the world must consist of simple parts. 
We must remember, however, that the matter here spoken 
of is nothing by itself, and is real only in relation to percep- 
tion. If we were compelled to assert that matter is infinitely 
divided, and consists in itself of an infinite number of parts, we 
should be in difficulty. What we said was that matter is in- 
finitely divisible. Divisibility, however, is not the same as 
dividedness. Since matter exists only for perception, the 
division of matter goes only so far as we have actually car- 
ried it. 

Now it is by virtue of a repulsive force that matter fills 
space and possesses elasticity and impenetrability. This force 
alone, however, is not sufficient to constitute matter. A 
purely repulsive force cannot limit itself, nor can it be lim- 
ited by space alone. By repulsive force merely, then, matter 
could be held within no bounds, but would dissipate itself to 
infinity. Another force is required, original in matter, and 
working in the opposite direction to the repulsive force. That 
is, the possibility of matter requires the assumption of a force 
of attraction as its second essential fundamental force. At- 
traction alone could never render matter possible. By its 
action the distances between the parts of matter would be 
lessened to zero; that is, matter would vanish in a mathe- 
matical point. Thus the two forces of attraction and repul- 
sion must equally be assumed. They are not, however, of 
equal rank. Repulsive force is a property contained in the 



2Z THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 

conception of matter, the ground of impenetrability. Attract- 
ive force does not belong to matter by conception, but is at- 
tributed by inference. The reason for this distinction is that 
the conception of matter involves the filling of space. Now 
that by virtue of which matter fills space is its repulsive force. 
The action of attractive force, on the contrary, is to annihilate 
matter by preventing the filling of space. The forces of at- 
traction and repulsion differ not only in the direction, but 
also in the method of their action. Repulsion acts only by 
physical contact, attraction only at a distance. Physical 
contact implies not only mathematical contact, but something 
more. It implies a dynamical relation of the repulsive forces 
of the two bodies. It is the reciprocal action of repulsive 
forces in the common boundary of the two matters. The ac- 
tion of the attractive force essential to all matter, on the 
other hand, is never by contact, but is an immediate effect upon 
other matter through empty space. 

It may be urged against the idea of action at a distance 
that a body cannot act where it is not. Kant replies that 
everything in space acts upon another thing in space where 
the acting thing is not. Merely by acting where it is a body 
cannot move another, since the other body is necessarily oat- 
side it. To deny the possibility of action at a distance is to 
assert that bodies can immediately affect one another only by 
the intervention of the forces of impenetrability. This means 
either that repulsive forces are the only ones by means of 
which matter becomes operative, or at least that they are 
the necessary condition of such operation. Both assertions, 
however, are without foundation. 

We may further describe repulsive and attractive forces as 
superficial and penetrative respectively. Repulsive force can- 
not move any distant part except by means of parts lying be- 
tween. It is merely a superficial force. Attractive force, on 
the other hand, extends itself directly through the universe 
to infinity. The degree of attraction is indeed diminished by 



THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 23 

extent of space, so that it is in inverse proportion to the 
square of the distance, but it is never reduced to zero. The 
effect of this universal attraction is gravitation, and the effort 
to move in the direction of the greater gravitation is 
weight. The effect of the repulsive force is elasticity. Elas- 
ticity and weight, then, are the only universal characteristics 
of matter that can be discovered a priori. 

Now this entire doctrine of dynamics must be brought into 
connection with the categories of quality. These categories 
are those of reality, negation, and limitation. The real in 
space is its filling through the force of repulsion. The force 
of attraction is opposed to the space-filling power, and is there- 
fore in respect to it negative. The determination of the degree 
of the filling of space results from the limitation of one force 
by the other. In analyzing matter into the result of the mu- 
tual limitation of these two forces, then, we have marked out 
the function of the categories of quality in a metaphysical 
dynamic. 

The metaphysics of motion must next be considered. In the 
first place let us look upon matter in its simplest aspect, as 
that which is capable of motion in space. In thus treating 
of matter under the categories of quality merely, we abstract 
from the causal connection of bodies and even from mass, 
and deal only with motion and its quantity. The task of 
phoronomy is to construct the quantitative relations of motion 
as determined in velocity and direction, and especially in the 
composition of motion. 

Matter is the movable in space. Space, however, may be 
considered from two points of view. Space which is movable 
is relative, that in which all motion must finally be conceived 
is absolute. Absolute space is not a space-in-itself, it is simply 
indeterminate space in general, within which every relative 
space can be assumed as moved. Now all motion which is 
perceptible is merely relative, and presupposes a larger rel- 
ative space in which the smaller space is moved. Motion is 



24 THE PHYSICS OP IDEALISM. 

merely the change of the external relations of a thing to a 
given space. This definition makes clear the relativity of mo- 
tion. It is indifferent whether we say that a body moves in 
one direction in a resting space, or that space moves in an 
opposite direction while the body remains at rest. 

The problem of the composition of motion is the real one 
of phoronomy. In constructing this conception one presents 
a priori in intuition a motion, so far as it arises from two or 
more given motions united in one movable. Now, in accord- 
ance with the principle of the relativity of motion, the compo- 
sition of two motions of the same movable can be presented 
only if one of them is presented in absolute space, while in- 
stead of the other, an equivalent motion of the relative space 
in the contrary direction is presented. There are three cases 
of the composition of motion, corresponding to the three cate- 
gories of quantity. The first, where two motions in the same 
direction and on the same line are compounded, involves unity 
of line and direction. The second, in which the motions take 
place along the same line in opposite directions, gives plurality 
of direction in the same line. In the third case two motions 
In different directions along lines, forming an angle are com- 
pounded into a motion along a line different from either of 
the others. This involves totality of lines and directions. 

So far we have considered motion in abstraction from the 
actual moving forces involved. We may now go on to meta- 
physical mechanics, which takes account of the quantity of 
matter and of motion, and of the relations of the moving 
forces of matter. In form, this brings the conception of 
matter under the categories of relation. The quantity of 
matter is the sum of the parts of a body which are movable 
in a given space. When these parts act together, they con- 
stitute a mass. The quantity of motion, for mechanics, is the 
product of the quantity of matter multiplied by its velocity. 
Now the only measure of the comparative quantity of matter 
contained in two bodies is the comparative quantity of mo- 
tion which the two exhibit. 



THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 25 

We are now ready to lay down the three fundamental laws 
of mechanics. The first asserts that in all physical changes 
the quantity of matter remains the same. It has been shown 
in the Critique of Pure Reason that no substance can arise or 
be annihilated, and here we need only point out what con- 
stitutes substance in matter. Now the movable in space is the 
ultimate subject of all the attributes of matter. The sum of 
its parts, therefore, is the quantity of material substance. 
Hence the increase or diminution of the quantity of matter 
would mean the creation or annihilation of substance, and is 
therefore impossible. 

The second law of mechanics is that every change of matter 
has an external cause. General metaphysics proves that every 
change has a cause, and it only remains to show that the 
cause of material change must be external. Matter, how- 
ever, is the object of the external sense, and therefore is sub- 
ject to no determinations except those of external relation 
in space. Since, then, matter has no internal determinations, 
all change of matter is based upon external causes. 

In like manner the third law of mechanics depends upon 
universal metaphysics. All external action is shown by meta- 
physics to be reciprocal action. The third law is that action 
and reaction are equal. It needs to be proved, then, that for 
mechanics reciprocal action is reaction. Kant proves this by 
the relativity of motion in space. It is indifferent whether 
we say that one body moves towards a second in space, or 
that the second together with its space moves towards the 
first. If the bodies come in contact, then, the impact of one 
will involve an equal opposed impact on the part of the other. 

These three laws, of permanence, inertia, and reaction, ex- 
actly correspond to the categories of substance, causality, and 
community, the three categories of relation. 

The sphere of the categories of modality has not yet been 
explained. This is done in the phenomenology, in which mat- 
ter is considered as an object of possible experience. The 



26 THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 

rectilinear motion of a body is a merely possible predicate. 
This is true because motion is relative and the moving body 
may with equal truth be regarded as resting, if we look upon 
its surrounding space as moving in the opposite direction. 
Absolute motion is impossible. Circular motion, however, in- 
volves a constant play of new forces such as rectilinear motion 
does not, and must therefore be admitted as a real predicate 
of matter. Again, if one body is moving in comparison with 
another, an equal opposite motion of the latter is necessary. 
Metaphysics can do no more than this, either in grounding 
a general theory of matter, or in explaining the basis of 
physical science. The further determinations and behavior 
of matter must be traced out by empirical research. 

C. Critical Analysis. 

The general favor with which the theory of matter set 
forth in the Metaphysic of Nature has been received by ideal- 
ists indicates that it can be readily assimilated to the thought 
of an idealistic philosophy. It is actually found, however, 
in connection with a system far removed from thorough-going 
idealism. The presumption would arise that it logically, be- 
longs in Kantian moorings, and that its appropriation by 
later speculators was not rationally justified. If this doc- 
trine issues from the phenomenalism of the Critique, how can 
it be preserved and even amplified by thinkers who hold that 
perfect science reveals reality? 

But is the presumption well grounded? Does Kant's Meta- 
physic of Nature results from the Critique of Pure Reason? 
Is it even consistent with the Critique? 

This discussion, then, does not at present concern the tena- 
bility and value of the views set forth in the Metaphysic of 
Nature. Let it be as valuable as Kant supposed. In the 
first preface of the Critique he says that he hopes to produce 
a system of pure speculative reason under the title of Meta- 
physic of Nature. "It will not be half so large, jet in- 



THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 27 

finitely richer than this Critique of Pure Reason" Accepting 
provisionally this evaluation, the question arises, Is it 
Kantian ? 

Let us deal first with the favorable presumption which is 
established by the apparent deduction of this speculative phi- 
losophy of nature from the Critique of Pure Reason. In the 
preface referred to, Kant speaks of this work as the carrying 
out to completeness of the doctrines of the Critique, "a com- 
pleteness rendered not only possible, but necessary, through 
the perfect unity of this kind of knowledge all derived from 
pure concepts, without any influence from experience, or 
from special intuitions leading to a definite kind of experience, 
that might serve to enlarge and increase it." 1 Within the 
work itself he repeatedly speaks in such a manner as to im- 
ply that he is merely applying the principles of metaphysics, 
and that no characteristic of matter which is not knowable 
a priori falls within the compass of the investigation. Thus, 
in the preface we find him saying, "It may serve as a second 
ground for gauging this procedure that in all that is called 
metaphysics the absolute completeness of the sciences may be 
hoped for, in such a manner as can be promised by no other 
species of knowledge, and therefore, just as in the Metaphysic 
of Nature generally, so here also the completeness of corporeal 
nature may be confidently expected; the reason being that in 
metaphysics the object is considered merely according to the 
universal laws of thought, but in other sciences as it must be 
presented according to the data of perception (empirical as 
well as pure) . * * * This metaphysical corporeal doctrine 
I believe myself to have completely exhausted, so far as it 
reaches, but do not affect thereby to have achieved any great 
work." 2 

Kant, then, wished to have the Metaphysic of Nature re- 
garded as deduced a priori from his philosophy. That it is 

1 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Max Muller's translation, vol. II, p. 
xxix. 

2 Kant, Werke, ed. Rosenkranz, vol. V, p. 313. 



28 THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 

accepted in this light, the following quotation from Professor 
Watson will show: "Kant, however, has a special treatise in 
which he sets forth the metaphysical principles of the science 
of nature, showing how intelligence, as operating upon the 
manifold of sense, gives rise to the world of matter. * * * 
The Metaphysic of Nature, then, contains those prin- 
ciples which are the product of the schematized categories as 
applied to a definite manifold of sense, the material world. 
* * * It is practically the concrete for the abstract of the 
Critique." x 

Kant reinforces this opinion by his obvious attempt to bring 
the teaching of the smaller work into connection with the 
categories of the understanding. The table of categories seems 
to determine the form and treatment of the entire discussion. 
The division of the work corresponds with the classes of cat- 
egories, and within each division it is pointed out that the 
entire teaching of that division is in reality nothing but the 
marking out of the function of the three categories involved. 
The form of the work itself, then, indicates the closest possible 
dependence upon the Critique. 

In fact, however, the fundamental doctrine of the Meta- 
physic of Nature is by no means dependent upon the Critique 
of Pure Reason. It was reached independently of the Critique, 
and before Kant even dreamed of the Copernican revolution 
in philosophy. It was reached from the standpoint of a philos- 
ophy the overthrow of which was one of the purposes of the 
Critique. It disregards some of the most central teachings 
of the Critique, and is flatly contradictory towards others. 

The most important portion of the Metaphysic of Nature 
is unquestionably the second part, dynamics, which explains 
matter as the product of the opposite forces of attraction and 
repulsion. Now the date of this work [1786], five years after 
the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, one year be- 
fore the second edition, and three years after the Prolegomena, 

1 Watson, Kant and his English Critics, p. 237. 



THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 29 

gives reason to believe that the views which it contains are 
fully in harmony with the speculations of the critical period. 
Bax says, ''Written in 1786, just one year before the publica- 
tion of the second edition of the Critique, it belongs to the 
maturest period of Kant's philosophical activity." If we take 
account of the earlier works of Kant, however, the presump- 
tion that the principles of the Critical Philosophy guided in 
working out the Metaphysic of Xature is greatly shaken. 

In this connection the most important is the Monadologia 
Physica, written in 1756. This work rests in general upon 
the post-Leibnitzian metaphysics. Starting from the doctrine 
that bodies consist of monads, simple substances which can 
exist in isolation one from another, the first part is devoted 
to a demonstration that the existence of physical monads is 
consistent with geometry. The second part explains further 
the most general characteristics of physical monads, and how 
they contribute to the understanding of the nature of bodies. 
In the first part Kant urges [Prop. VI] that a monad marks 
off the small space of its presence not through a plurality of 
real parts, but through the circle of its activities by which it 
restrains the monads everywhere present without it from 
approaching closer to itself. One is to look for the ground of 
the filling of space, he says, not in the mere existence of the 
substance, but in an activity which the monad exerts out- 
wardly in all directions. This view is identical with the one 
supported in the dynamics, and is supported by the same ar- 
guments. Here, however, it is explicit that the monad is 
simple and indivisible, while in the dynamics the parts of 
matter are supposed to be at least capable of farther division. 

In Prop. VIII Kant shows that the force by which a body 
fills space is the force which results in impenetrability. Elas- 
ticity is also explained from this same force, in the same 
way as in the later work. The force of expansion has a definite 
degree, which may always be exceeded by other forces. Since., 
however, by compression the repulsive force becomes stronger 



30 THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 

it is clear that by no conceivable force can the element be 
thoroughly penetrated. The Metaphysical Basis of the Nat- 
ural Sciences adds nothing to this handling of impenetrability 
and elasticity. 

Prop. X of the Monadologia Physica shows that repulsive 
force alone cannot constitute matter, since by repulsion mat- 
ter would be held to no definite bounds, but would dissipate 
itself to infinity. An equally original attractive force must 
therefore be assumed. Kant then develops the relations of 
these two opposed forces, and the physical conceptions 
'grounded by each, in a manner precisely similar to that which 
he employed later when writing the dynamics. 

The divisibility of matter, however, is treated somewhat 
differently in the two works. The Monadologia Physica op- 
poses the infinite divisibility of matter, holding that matter 
consists of simple parts, that is, of monads. The later work 
maintains that matter is infinitely divisible, but not in- 
finitely divided. In this respect the influence of the Critique 
is apparent. 

In the first division of the Metaphysic of Nature, the 
phoronomy, the composition of motion, is explained by means 
of the relativity of motion. It would perhaps seem that Kant 
in maintaining this position was influenced by the results 
of the Transcendental Aesthetic. If space as known is simply 
a relational form, and in no wise a thing-in-itself, the doctrine 
of relativity would seem to issue. Certainly Kant makes large 
use of this idea, It is developed in the phoronomy, and there 
applied to the composition of motion. In the mechanics it is 
again brought in to explain the necessity of equality in action 
and reaction. Again, the whole of the fourth division rests 
upon the relativity of motion. Now in the Monadologia Phys- 
ica nothing is found of this principle. Two years later, how- 
ever, in 1758, Kant published an essay entitled A New Doc- 
trine of Motion and Rest. In this he developed very fully 
the idea that all motion of a body in space may with equal 



THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM, 31 

propriety be regarded as the motion of a relative space while 
the body really rests. Motion and rest, he urges, are terms 
which can never be used in an absolute sense, but only in a 
relative one. This is the same doctrine of motion as occurs 
in the Metaphysic of Nature. In the latter work, however, 
the conception of rest is more fully developed. Kest, it is 
urged, is to be conceived, not as a lack of motion, but rather 
as lasting presence in the same place, in one set of relations. 
If it is so conceived, we may hold that the body called at rest 
is really in motion with an infinitely small velocity. The ad- 
vantage to be derived from such a conception is that it falls 
into line with the principle of continuity, and enables us to 
pass gradually from motion to rest. Mathematical analogies 
strongly motivate this conception. It had not been fully 
reached and stated at the time of the essay on Motion and 
Rest, but the arguments which go to develop it are already 
there. Kant urges that if the law of continuity is to hold, 
and if rest is defined as the absence of motion, one body can 
never take effect upon another, for the reason that the begin- 
ning of motion, involving as it does a definite velocity suddenly 
added to the body, would break the law of continuity. This 
difficulty, which Kant later solves by defining rest as perma- 
nent presence in the same place, involving infinitesimal mo- 
tion, he avoids in the essay by casting some reflections on the 
law of continuity. The theory of rest, then, advanced in 1758, 
is not quite the same as that propounded in 1785. In the 
former discussion, however, Kant had already arrived at the 
dilemma, the solution of which resulted in the later doctrine. 
It is clear, then, that the doctrine of rest, as stated in the 
Metaphysic of Nature, was reached independently of the 
Critical Philosophy. 

I have shown that the doctrine of the relativity of motion 
as worked out in the phoronomy had been elaborated by Kant 
twenty-eight years before. The most important use which he 
makes of this doctrine is to aid him in deriving a priori the 



32 THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 

law of mechanics that action and reaction are equal. It is 
in the attempted proof of this law that the third division of 
the Metaphysic of Nature, the mechanics, makes its only im- 
portant addition to the Analogies of Experience in the Cri- 
tique of Pure Reason. Borrowing from general metaphysics 
the statement that all external action is reciprocal action, the 
Metaphysics of Nature has to prove only that this reciprocal 
action is reaction — equal and opposed. The proof rests solely 
upon the relativity of motion. Now, in the essay on Motion 
and Rest this same proof is worked out as one of the conse- 
quences of the theory published in 1758. The a priori deduc- 
tion of the third law of mechanics, then, was gained not from 
the standpoint of the Critical Philosophy, but some quarter 
of a century before the critical period. 

The fourth division of the Metaphysic of Nature, the 
phenomenology, rests almost entirely upon the relativity of 
motion. It makes one addition, by way of correction, to the 
view hitherto expounded. Circular motion, it asserts, is to 
be looked upon not merely as relative, but as real. The rea- 
son for so regarding it is that circular motion involves a con- 
stant play of forces in order to change the direction, such as 
rectilinear motion does not. It is not apparent at what time 
this amendment of his favorite theory of the relativity of mo- 
tion first occurred to Kant. Clearly, however, it has no logical 
connection with the Critique. The reason for asserting that 
circular motion is real is a purely physical one. Kant is in 
fact indorsing a well-known argument of Newton. The two 
remaining propositions of the phenomenology are mere repeti- 
tions of Kant's theory of motion, and contain nothing new. 
They are added here only to fill out his systematic scheme. 
Indeed, there is no other reason for the existence of the entire 
fourth division, the phenomenology — a fact pointed out by 
Kirchmann and Adickes. 1 It contains nothing new, and noth- 
ing of value from the standpoint of the Critical Philosophy. 

1 Adickes, KanVs Systematik, p. 130. 



THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 33 

Let us now briefly summarize the results of our examina- 
tion of the Metaphysical Basis of the Natural Sciences. Nearly 
the whole of this work has been shown to be a restatement 
without essential change of positions reached decades before 
the critical period. The contents of the phoronomy, which 
deals with motion, rest, and the composition of motions, were 
stated in 1758 in a form which, if somewhat less developed, 
was in essentials the same. There is nothing in this division 
which results from the Critique; and if we except the allusion 
to the categories with which the section ends, no effort to 
bring its doctrines into harmony with the Critique. The dyn- 
amics develops the idea, of matter as the product of two 
forces. This entire doctrine is a restatement without marked 
change of doctrines expressed in the Monadologia Physica. 
It contains, however, a discussion of the infinite divisibility of 
matter which is due in part to the Critique and opposed to the 
teaching of the earlier work. The mechanics is related more 
closely to the Critique than are any of the other divisions. 
At the same time, it contains nothing really Kantian. It 
assumes the validity of the proofs of the analogies of expe- 
rience, given in the Critique. To deduce the laws of motion 
becomes then an easy matter; the work had really been done 
in the Critique. The proof of the third law, however, required 
some additional effort, and here Kant availed himself of a 
demonstration worked out in 1758. The phenomenology, as 
has already been remarked, contains nothing of importance. 

The wholly artificial character of the reference of these 
principles to the categories of the understanding is through- 
out clearly apparent. We have only to remember what the 
categories really are. They are functions of the understand- 
ing operative in constructing and determining individual ob- 
jects. They issue in the predicates which the understanding 
applies to things. In order to know a single object fully we 
have to recognize its predicates under each of the several 
categories which determine its objectivity. The categories are 
3 



34 THE PHYSICS OP IDEALISM. 

active, then, not merely in the objective world as a whole, but 
in every object of that world, and several categories are ap- 
plied to each object. Now the applications of them which 
Kant here makes are often absurd. The categories of modality 
seem to have exhausted their usefulness in the apprehension of 
nature when they have informed us that one kind of motion is 
possible, another real, and a third necessary. Unity, plurality, 
and totality busy themselves with the task of informing us 
that if two bodies move along the same line in the same direc- 
tion unity is involved, if in opposite directions plurality, 
while if on different lines totality of lines and directions can 
be predicated. 

It is obvious that the work which the categories really per- 
form, according to a Kantian theory of knowledge, is not 
that for which he is here using them. The application which 
he is here making of the table of the categories is only another 
manifestation of his well-known desire to systematize. Dr. 
Adickes, in his study on Kant's Systematik, has made an 
analysis of the present work from this standpoint. In it he 
lops off a large number of captions which were added by 
Kant for no other reason than to fill out his scheme. The 
phoronomy, which we treated after the dynamics, was placed 
first by Kant for this reason. It really contains, as Adickes 
points out, nothing but the doctrine of motion and rest, and 
of compound motion. It has nothing to do with unity, 
plurality, or totality. Concerning the dynamics, Adickes says 
"It is completely arbitrary when he brings the forces of at- 
traction and repulsion into connection with the categories of 
reality and negation." x Besides, this does not contain the whole 
of the dynamics, as it takes no account of the doctrine of the 
divisibility of matter, the only constituent derived from the 
Critique. Concerning the fourth division, the phenomenology, 
Adickes justly holds that it is added solely for the sake of the 
scheme. Although it purports to consider matter "merely in 

1 Adickes, KanVs Systematic, p. 126. 



THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 35 

relation to the mode of presentation, or modality, and there- 
fore as a phenomenon of the outer sense," matter has already 
been regarded as a phenomenon of the outer sense. 

"Let us eliminate," says Adickes, "what was taken in only 
on account of the system; that is, from the mechanics the 
first and second mechanical laws, from the phenomenology 
the first and third propositions. As the most important con- 
tents we then have left : 

"First division : Doctrine of motion and rest and especially 
of compound motions. 

"Second division: Doctrine of the essence of matter (orig- 
inal forces and divisibility). 

"Third division : Doctrine of the estimation of the quantity 
of matter, of the equality of action and reaction. 

"Fourth division : Doctrine of circular motion." 

This analysis seems to me well judged. If we now elimi- 
nate also what is precritical and what has no reference to 
the Critique we lose all that remains of the first division, since 
it was contained in the earlier essay on Motion and Rest ; we 
lose the second division with the exception of the discussion 
of divisibility; we lose the third division, since the estima- 
tion of matter is discussed without reference to the Critique, 
and the equality of action and reaction is proved as it was 
twenty-seven years before; and we lose the fourth division, 
since the sop to Copernican astronomy contained in the doc- 
trine of circular motion has no reference to transcendantal 
philosophy. Sum total — the only important respect in which 
the Metaphysic of Nature applies the ideas of Kantian phi- 
losophy is in maintaining the infinite divisibility of matter. 

These historical considerations doubtless serve to remove 
the presumption that the Metaphysical Basis of the Natural 
Sciences is an application of transcendentalism to physical 
discussion. At the same time, since it was written after the 
Critical philosophy had taken form, one might expect it to 
be sufficiently in harmony with Kantian principles to merit 
its place within his system. 



36 THE PHYSICS OP IDEALISM. 

But not even that is trne. The difficulty of applying the 
theory of nature there found to the Kantian view of the 
world is apparent at all points. The Metaphysic of Nature 
presupposes space as existing independently of the percipient 
mind. As soon as we introduce the doctrine of the subjec- 
tivity of space, the conceptions of attractive and repulsive 
forces lose the meaning which they formerly possessed. A 
new meaning might possibly be read into them — to do so, in 
fact, was the work of later reflection by Fichte and Schelling; 
but it would constitute a new doctrine which would supplant 
the old. Hegel has shown that Kant does not make clear what 
are these forces by means of which space is filled. They are 
not brought into relation with the knowing mind, but appear 
to belong to a nature which exists independently of the mind. 
No attempt is made to show that the dualism implied in such 
a view is to be revised in favor of any form of monism. In 
fact the view offered by Kant goes more readily with what he 
calls dogmatic realism than with his own philosophy. This 
is due, of course, to the fact that it was originally developed 
from the standpoint of the Wolffian system, before Kant's 
historic arousal by Hume had taken place. Lotze says con- 
cerning this work : "I lament, in the first place, the gap which 
separates the results of these speculations from those of the 
Critique of Pure Reason. The ideal nature of space which is 
asserted in the Critique is here left almost out of account ; 
the construction of matter is attempted exclusively from the 
ordinary point of view, according to which there is a real ex- 
tension, and there must be activities adapted to fill it. I 
lament no less what has previously been observed by Hegel, 
viz., that there should remain so much uncertainty as to the 
subject to which the activities thus manifesting themselves in 
space, and so constituting matter, are to be attributed." 1 

It is evident, then, that whatever richness there may be in 
the Kantian Metaphysic of Nature, it does not properly be- 

1 Lotze, Metaphysic, section 178. 



THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 37 

long to Kantianism as a system. Grown in a soil of Wolffian 
realism its appropriation and logical development by idealism 
furnishes a problem for later thinkers of the transcendentalist 
movement. 



38 THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 



CHAPTER II. 



A. Transition to Schelling. 

The philosophical revolution which Kant had begun was 
carried to its legitimate completion by hands more resolute 
than his. Starting from the Critique of Pure Reason and the 
Critique of Practical Reason, Fichte united into a harmonious 
system these discordant elements of the Kantian philosophy, 
and cleared the whole of the last lingering traces of dogmatic 
realism. The general result of Kant's work had been to show 
that the world, so far as consciousness is concerned, is the 
product of the synthetic activity of thought. If any other 
principle than active Reason is admitted to exist, it can at 
any rate have no influence on the world we know. That which 
really maintains the world is the activity implied in thought, 
and since of this we can never say that it is, but only that it 
acts, it follows that the world with its permanence cannot be 
explained as the manifestation of an existent substance. The 
synthesis of Kant overthrows the identity of Spinoza. 

But if the world is the creation of a monistic active prin- 
ciple, it remains to show how from mere activity can arise a 
subject and object in knowledge, morality and duty, the 
permanence of matter, and the laws of organic and inorganic 
Nature. Fichte devoted himself to the problems of knowledge 
and of ethics. With those branches of the philosophy of Kant 
which concern physical nature and organic life, however, he 
had nothing to do. He believed that a correct understanding 
of the process of knowledge demonstrated that the questions 
of natural science have no real philosophical interest. If na- 
ture is only the creation of thought, any constancies which 



THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 39 

may be discovered in things prove nothing about the Absolute 
Spirit which could not already be shown by an examination 
of intelligence. For the purposes of philosophy, then, the 
science of nature can add nothing to the truth which has al- 
ready been worked out by the science of knowledge. 

This result, however, is a paradoxical one. The body of 
scientific knowledge is too vast and too definite to allow us to 
believe that it is without significance for speculation. It was 
this impressiveness of nature, with her numerous and vigorous 
sciences, that induced Schelling to undertake the task of 
working out the philosophical significance of the laws and 
phenomena of the objective world. From the speculative 
standpoint which Schelling at the time occupied such a task 
could not legitimately be proposed. He did not then clearly 
see, however, what he afterward so strenuously maintained, 
that the Fichtean philosophy could give no account of the 
meaning of nature. Believing that the Kantian theories of 
cognition and of volition had received their true elaboration 
at the hands of Fichte, Schelling was impressed with the neces- 
sity of handling in the same spirit the discussion of those sub- 
jects which are treated in the Critique of Judgment and the 
Metaphysical Basis of the Natural Sciences. 

In his earlier works upon the Philosophy of Nature, then ? 
the connection of the results there set forth with transcen- 
dental idealism was not clear. The attempt to explain more 
thoroughly this connection called to Schelling's attention the 
necessity of revising the metaphysical principles upon which 
he was relying. The manner in which this revision was grad- 
ually carried out, in the course of the publication of several 
important works, adds greatly to the difficulty of discussing 
Schelling. The difficulties are perhaps less annoying, in deal- 
ing with the fundamental principles of the NaturphilosojtJiic, 
however, than in any other part of his system. Schelling's 
opinions were subjected to continual modification, and in the 
sphere of more detailed scientific explanation one theory was 



40 THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 

often discarded for another. The basal principles of the 
Philosophy of Nature, however, were maintained throughout 
the several most important works with a fair degree of con- 
stancy, even though the metaphysical setting changed. Now 
it is the underlying principles which constitute the most 
valuable part of the Naturphilosophie. Neither by tempera- 
ment nor by training was Schelling fitted for discussing the 
more detailed problems of science, but in lining out the essen- 
tial principles of an idealistic philosophy of natural science 
his work has determined the drift of subsequent speculation 
and has a lasting significance. 

Our study of Schelling does not undertake a systematic ex- 
position. It rather aims to analyze in a critical manner the 
nature of the problem which he proposes, so far as it is re- 
lated to fundamental physical ideas, and to evaluate the 
means which idealism furnishes for coherent and illuminating 
thinking of this type. 

B. The Metaphysical Point of Departure of the Philosophy of 
Nature. 

In his earlier years Schelling was in full accord with 
Fichte on all questions of metaphysics, and his writings are 
among the clearest and ablest expositions of the Wissen- 
scMftslehre. Prior to the publication of the Ideas Toivards a 
Philosophy of Nature, there is only one point upon which he 
had made a significant modification of the doctrines of the 
master. This modification, one may add, was not so much 
in the spirit of revision as of development. Fichte had started 
from the Ego, a principle by which he sought to unify abso- 
lute spirit and the finite spirit. The Ego is not with Fichte 
the Absolute, it is not God, nor yet is it merely the subjective 
consciousness of the knowing finite individual, but it is in a 
sense both. 

Fichte had himself experienced difficulty, however, in keep- 
ing the two from falling apart. A large part of the difficulty 



THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 41 

of the Wissemchaftslehre turns upon ambiguities arising from 
these two senses in which the word Ego is used. It is by the 
more explicit recognition and statement of the distinction be- 
tween the Absolute Ego and the finite Ego that Sehelling first 
manifests his tendency to break away from the subjectivism 
of his teacher, and to find in absolute spirit a firmer basis for 
the independence of nature than could readily be conceded 
by Fichte. 

If we take, then, the standpoint of the Absolute Ego, the 
true standpoint for the deepest metaphysical view of reality, 
we are obliged to recognize that spirit is the only true ex- 
istence in the world. The finite mind which cognizes the 
objective world is but one form of activity of the deeper lying 
and more universal spiritual principle. In the finite mind 
this principle comes to consciousness, as by its nature it must 
do, but it is independent of the finite mind. The same abso- 
lute spirit underlies all finite minds, and becomes conscious 
of itself in the self-consciousness of individuals. It underlies 
also, however, the objective world of which the individual mind 
takes cognizance. Since spirit is all that truly is, nature can- 
not be something opposed to spirit and independent of it. 
Nature may very well be independent of the mind of man, but 
it must be sustained and ever produced anew by the universal 
spiritual principle from which it derives its life and essence. 
But just as the knowing mind is such because in it the Ab- 
solute Ego has come to consciousness, so for Sehelling the 
objective world is real and material because in it the Abso- 
lute Ego is not conscious of its activity. Universal Spirit pro- 
duces the world of nature, but produces it blindly, without 
knowledge that it is producing a world. Because the Absolute 
Ego is not aware of its agency in producing and maintaining 
nature, when it comes to consciousness, in finite minds, it 
regards nature as something strange to it, something foreign, 
something entirely independent of mind. In other words, 
nature is real. This is the reason why the common sense of 



42 THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 

mankind declares the objective world to be independent of 
mind. It is independent of any conscious mind, but not in- 
dependent of the spiritual principle upon which the conscious- 
ness of that mind depends. It is upon this fact that the dis- 
tinction between reality and ideality is founded. Viewed from 
the highest standpoint, the productivity active in nature is 
free, it is an activity of pure spirit, and therefore ideal. But 
it never comes to consciousness of itself. When it is cog- 
nized, it is the object of an intelligence, and is accordingly 
regarded as opposed to intelligence. It appears, then, no 
longer as free, but as subjected to laws of necessity, and 
devoid of mind. "From the impossibility of the consciousness 
of a free act arises the whole distinction between ideality and 
reality." 1 With Schelling, as with Fichte, activity is in the 
truest sense ideal; but if we mean by real that which seems 
independent of the mind of the subject, and to be governed 
by necessary laws giving no evidence of its ideal character, 
then the unconscious activity of spirit as it manifests itself 
in the objective world is real. 

This conception of unconscious spirit, which attains with 
Schelling so great importance, had come down to him through 
Fichte from Kant. The Critique of Pure Reason teaches that 
if perceptions are to form one continuous consciousness, and 
so an experience at all, the synthesizing unity of apperception 
must seize upon the sense given elements and bind them to- 
gether. The existence of relations in the content of con- 
sciousness presupposes that they have been construed into the 
manifold by thought. This synthetic activity of thought, then, 
is deeper than the ideas which it synthesizes, and is not fully 
in consciousness. The "I think" which must be capable of 
attending every idea in consciousness is evidence of the syn- 
thetic unity, but not the apperception itself. Kant recognizes 
in the activity of the mind several stages or kinds of syn- 
thesis. The data of sense must first be seized upon by appre- 

1 Fichte, Science of Knowledge, Eng. tr., p, 219. 



THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 43 

hension. Then elements which would otherwise have gone 
must be reproduced, redintegrated. But all these thought 
relations, and the entire work of synthesis as shown in appre- 
hension and reproduction, are purely subjective, and furnish 
no basis for the independence and orderliness of the objective 
world. It is the work of the productive imagination to supply 
this deficiency. By its mode of functioning the productive 
imagination gives the objective basis for the affinities of 
presentations, by means of which the subjective association 
first becomes impossible. It seems to be the stiffening agent 
by which the manifold of sense is hardened into a cosmos 
obedient to definite physical laws — a cosmos concerning which 
more can be predicted than is warranted by the table of the 
categories. It ought to be the ground of explanation for 
everything in experience not furnished by the categories of 
the understanding or the given manifold, and even for the 
diversities in these. This important sphere, of which it takes 
complete possession in later idealistic thought, is only hes- 
itatingly conceded to it by Kant. The precise field which the 
productive imagination is to occupy is not clearly marked off 
by Kant, but its importance to his system in constructing the 
objectivity of the world - is fully recognized. He describes it 
as a blind, unconscious faculty of the soul, a form of synthe- 
sis in which the elements of the idea are bound together as 
they have perhaps never before appeared in consciousness. 
It is the same activity, he says, which performs one activity 
as productive imagination, and another as synthetic unity of 
apperception. And since the syntheses of apprehension and 
of recognition are only special forms of the apperceptive 
synthesis, it follows that all these faculties which Kant has 
distinguished are but modes in which the one activity of 
spirit energizes. 

It is from such a consideration of the origin of the principle 
of the unconscious that we best see its true character. It was 
introduced into philosophy, in the first place, not to explain 



44 THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 

the causal action of external things upon our sensibility, but 
to explain the possibility of a rational experience. It is not 
therefore a substance, or any residuum or abstraction of 
objectivity. It is rather akin to will — a relationship that be- 
came apparent after Fichte had united the practical and spec- 
ulative philosophy of Kant. Activity is then higher and more 
ultimate than existence and permanence. "The unconditioned 
cannot be sought in any individual thing, nor in anything of 
which one can say that it is. * * * Bather there is revealed 
in every object of nature a principle of being which does not 
itself exist." * 

The further fortunes of this conception of an unconscious 
spiritual productivity showed that it had not reached its 
final form with Schelling. In itself it is not consonant with 
the spirit of idealism. Idealism must define the real as the 
perfection of that principle displayed in the idealism of con- 
sciousness. Consciousness, then, is necessarily inseparable 
from spirit, and an unconscious spiritual activity is wooden 
iron. But while we must conceive of Beal Mind in terms of 
consciousness, it is evident that the rational motivation of 
the individual finite thinker is far from being entirely and 
clearly displayed within the finite consciousness. No doubt 
that fact indicates a reflection upon the finality, the self- 
sufficiency, the absolute reality of the finite individual, but 
this inference is not declined by idealism. The Principle of 
the System, which is the ground both of knowing and of 
being, is active in the individual's thought. The logical pro- 
pulsion which results from this over-individual motivation is 
apparent even in perception, although perhaps more distinctly 
so in conception and inference. No scientific or philosophical 
mind, not even the most talented, can exhaustively state and 
realize the implication of those logical promptings of which 
he is incipiently conscious; to do so would bring to each 
individual the full consciousness of the rational cosmos. Yet 

^chelling-, Sammtliche Werke, Bd. Ill, S. 11. 



THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 45 

those logical promptings are not simply subjective imaginings. 
They are intimations of universe system, and have their centre 
of gravity in the Real, the Systematic Universal. From the 
function which they perform in building the structure of 
science and of truth we are able to ascribe to them over- 
individual import. This import is implicated in our con- 
sciousness, is of the very texture of reason itself, and yet is 
not given in our consciousness. To us, then, it is an un- 
conscious control of our thought and judgment ; we cannot say 
that it indicates an agency which is unconscious in itself, or 
outside the purview of the Absolute. 

The point of departure of the Philosophy of Nature from 
transcendental philosophy having been indicated, it remains 
to mention two other metaphysical principles which deter- 
mined Schelling's treatment. 

In the first place, that treatment must be frankly and con- 
sciously monistic, as natural science is not. Wherever sep- 
aratist principles are set up in isolation from the other 
forces of nature, Schelling sees an antagonist. It is for this 
reason that vitalism receives his condemnation, even while 
its commonly recognized opponent, mechanism, does not win 
his support. It is this that makes him an evolutionist, re- 
garding every new form of being as only a new gradation of 
the same process already revealed in other forms. It caused 
him also to regard all forms of physical force as varieties of 
one systematizing force, although the work of Joule and 
Helmholz had not yet rendered the thought an easy one to 
hold. Schelling's Philosophy of Nature must be monistic, 
then, because idealism is monistic; but it must enter into the 
details of nature and scientific theory, as ordinary philosophi- 
cal monism has not felt itself compelled to do. 

In the second place, the categories which exhibit more 
perfectly intrinsic membership of parts within a systematic 
whole must claim for Schelling a certain superior dignity 
and truth, as against those which do not. Accordingly, 



46 THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 

teleological conceptions will dominate over mechanical ones, 
and conceptions of the organic world over those of the in- 
organic one. This necessarily follows from idealistic presup- 
positions, since the ideal is real, and the ideal, as determined 
through the idealism of consciousness, culminates in a uni- 
versal synthesizing purpose, an organic unity. It is apparent 
in Schelling in his opposition to mechanical conceptions of 
matter, in his conception of nature as a universal organism, 
and in many minor turns of his thought. 

Subject to the criticism already passed upon the conception 
of unconscious mental productivity, it would seem that the 
foundations of the Philosophy of Nature as here described 
are soundly laid. If a man is to be an idealistic thinker, he 
must address his thought to the problems of natural science 
under the guidance of the three principles here outlined; and 
it is only the fact that other writers have often blinked the 
problem which is entailed by a genuine and detailed synthesis 
of the sciences from this point of view that has enabled them 
to neglect the building of an idealistic Naturphilosophie* 

C. The Problem and Method of the Philosophy of Nature. 

The physical sciences deal with matter and force. For 
them matter cannot be created or destroyed. Even the par- 
ticles in which it is present exist eternally. Moreover, it is 
in a certain sense inert. The possibility of a science of me- 
chanics, and ,with it of physics generally, rests upon the 
principle that any change in the mode of behavior of a ma- 
terial body must be produced by an external cause. The mag- 
nitude of the effect produced will bear a definitely determin- 
able relation to the power of the causes operating upon a 
body of known physical qualities. This is possible only if 
matter is capable of being regarded as inert, devoid of self- 
centered spontaneity. 

But transcendental philosophy has declared that there is 
nothing in the world but spirit, and that spirit is never inert, 



THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 47 

but is freely active. This conclusion of transcendental phi- 
losophy must be accepted by the Philosophy of Nature. 
"Nature must be viewed as the unconditioned. The idea of 
the existent as something original must be banished from the 
Philosophy of Nature, as from transcendental philosophy." 1 
"For the science of nature, therefore, nature is originally only 
productivity and from this as its principle science must set 
out." 2 

This conception of nature harmonizes well with the prin- 
ciples of idealistic philosophy. But the facts of mechanics 
and chemistry do not obviously square with it. Perception 
seems to support the claim of scientific theory that nature is 
opposed to mind and totally unlike it. Philosophy asserts that 
in truth no such nature exists. The burden of proof, then, 
is upon the side of idealism. It must point out in detail how 
a principle which is through and through spirit may exert its 
activities in such a manner as to produce the appearance of 
a nature subject to the laws of mechanical necessity and 
quite devoid of the purposive spontaneity which is commonly 
ascribed to mind. The particular findings of science must be 
interpreted in such a way as to give them some significance 
for philosophy. 

It is Schilling's great merit to have recognized fully the 
task which devolves upon idealism in the interpretation of 
Nature. That with which all philosophical speculation deals 
is nature as productivity, natura naturans. This, he urges, 
is nature as the unconditioned subject; it is the productive 
activity in its unlimitedness. In antithesis to this, however, 
arises nature as product, natura naturata. It is this with 
which all empirical knowledge deals. When we look upon 
the totality of objects as the sum of being, this totality 
is a mere product. It does not follow, however, that 
the product is totally distinct from the productivity. Cm 

1 Schelling-, Siimmtliche Werke, Bd. Ill, S. 12. 

2 Ibid, S. 283. 



48 THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 

the contrary, the productivity is working in and through the 
products. The ordinary empirical view, fixing its attention 
upon the complex of products, fails to recognize the produc- 
tivity. The philosophical view, on the other hand, is con- 
cerned primarily with the productivity, and for it the product 
vanishes in the productivity. "We may indeed be quite cer- 
tain that every natural phenomenon, through whatever num- 
ber of intermediate links, stands in connection with the ulti- 
mate conditions of a nature; the intermediate links them- 
selves, however, may be unknown to us, and still lying hidden 
in the depths of nature/' * But still the facts remain, and 
are not to be lost sight of by a. speculative theory of nature. 
Their connection with that higher principle must then be 
pointed out. The task which confronts idealistic philosophy, 
then, is that of showing in what manner the productivity of 
nature, which is not matter, passes over into the world of 
products. k 'The chief problem of Naturphilosophie is to ex- 
plain, not the active in nature, but the permanent." 2 But now 
this permanent is that which physical science recognizes as 
matter, from the qualities of which it seeks to explain all 
physical phenomena. Accordingly, the explanation of 
permanence resolves itself into an account of the manner in 
which matter as a persistent product arises through the ac- 
tivity of a spiritual principle. "The sole problem of the 
Philosophy of Nature is the construction of matter." 3 It 
must be possible to exhibit the material world as resulting 
from absolute spirit. In this sense, then, Naturphilosophie 
is a construction of the objective world upon the basis of 
idealism. Spirit is the prius, nature results from it and has 
merely a derived reality. It is the object of the Philosophy 
of Nature to present matter in this conditioned relation to 
spirit. "By this deduction of all natural phenomena from 

1 Schelling, S'dmmtliche Werke, Bd. Ill, S. 279. 

2 Ibid, Bd. Ill, S. 18. 

3 Ibid, Bd. IV, S. 3. 



THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 19 

an absolute hypothesis, our knowing is changed into a con- 
struction of nature itself, that is, into a science of nature 
a priori." 1 

But although the task of a theoretical construction of ma- 
teriality, in this sense, is one that may be legitimately pro- 
posed to any philosophy, it is surprising how much misunder- 
standing has been caused by Schilling's statement that 
NaturphilosopfUe must construct nature. It has been taken 
to mean that the philosopher, resting firmly upon the onto- 
logical principles of his metaphysics, must striye to deduce 
from them the particular nature of matter and the laws 
which by its construction matter must obey. He attempts to 
do this, it is supposed, without any reference to the teachings 
which experience may offer, by a priori deductions from con- 
ceptions. The deyotee of Xaturphilosophie is assumed to be- 
lieye that he finds in metaphysics sufficient grounds for reject- 
ing theories which science accepts, theories which are purely 
scientific and have no metaphysical character. In opposition 
to these scientifically sound and metaphysically innocuous 
theories he sets up theories which are usually metaphysically 
bad, but especially are for science rubbish. For these latter 
yiews he advances no sufficient scientific support, but rests 
purely upon his a priori deduction. Concerning the value of 
this pleasant dream of Naturphilosophie the friends of em- 
pirical science do not hold two opinions. The modern phys- 
icist declares that not one characteristic of matter or prin- 
ciple of physical action can be established by a priori reason- 
ing. From Newton's warning against metaphysics to Tait's 
fierce tirades against a priori theorizing upon physical sub- 
jects the tide of scientific opinion has run strongly against 
deductive Naturphilosoph ie. 

Sow it is not to be denied that much of the censure directed 
against Naturphilosophie by men of science has been deserved. 
It was due, however, largely to a misconception of the purpose 

^chelling, S'dmmtliche Werke, Bd. Ill, S. 278. 
4 



50 THE PHYSIOS OF IDEALISM. 

and intent of a speculative Philosophy of Nature. An ideal- 
istic treatment of this problem which retains its sanity is not 
obliged to contest any legitimate deliverance of empirical 
science. When the scientific theory is expressed in terms 
which carry with them perverse metaphysical assumptions, 
it sometimes becomes necessary for the philosopher to insist 
that the theory in question is not purely scientific. What he 
is actually opposing, however, is the metaphysics involved, 
and not the empirical knowledge that is systematized by the 
theory. He is laying no claim to the right to use philosophy 
as an instrument of scientific discovery or of proof apart from 
experience. The matter has been well put by Schelling : "The 
assertion that natural science must be able to deduce all its 
principles a priori is in a measure understood to mean that 
natural science must dispense with all experience, and, with- 
out any intervention of experience, be able to spin all its prin- 
ciples out of itself — an affirmation so absurd that the very 
objections to it deserve pity. Not only do we know this or 
that through experience, but we originally know nothing at 
all except through experience. * * * But every datum 
which is merely historical for me, a datum of experience, be- 
comes, notwithstanding, an a priori principle as soon as I 
arrive, whether directly or indirectly, at insight into its in- 
ternal necessity. * * * It is not therefore that we know 
nature, tut nature is a priori; that is, every individual in it 
is predetermined by the whole, or by the Idea of a nature 
generally. But if nature is a priori, then it must be possible 
to recognize it as something that is a priori, and this is really 
the meaning of our assertion." x 

This ought to be a sufficient guarantee that Naturphiloso- 
phie, so long as it remains within its legitimate sphere, will 
not attempt to establish scientific hypotheses without regard 
to the facts. If in carrying out this work Schelling did not 
remain within the legitimate sphere of Naturphilosophie, that 
does not prove the task itself a mistaken one. 

1 Schelling, S'dmmtUche WerJce, Bd. Ill, S. 278-279. 



THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. ' 51 

But although Schelling grants by these statements that 
he is not justified in deducing from metaphysical principles 
the particular rules of the material world, in two important 
respects he offends against the spirit of this admission. In 
the first place, he offers fanciful scientific hypotheses, and ex- 
hibits them as necessarily resulting from his more funda- 
mental principles. In fact the logical connection is always 
faulty, and therefore the weakness of the theories apparently 
deduced does not for the philosopher impeach the principles 
from which they are said to be derived, although it has ren- 
dered the whole work unpopular with men of scientific tem- 
perament. The second point is of greater philosophical im- 
portance. Schelling insists in sober earnest that the entire 
body of doctrine which he calls dynamics may be constructed 
a priori without recourse to experience. 1 By dynamics he 
here means the theory of matter, not in so far as matter is 
regarded as in motion and interaction, but in so far as it 
is regarded as composed of moving forces. It will be found 
that Schelling's success in establishing those features of his 
dynamics which he regards as sustained chiefly by a priori 
considerations has not been such as to vindicate the validity 
of the method. If he had held firmly by his principle that 
we do not spell out nature by a priori method, but only aim 
to recognize it as something that really is a priori, lie would 
perhaps have escaped censure upon this point. By disregard- 
ing it, however, he has given an opportunity for Lotze and 
others to urge with justice that we cannot hope to construct 
reality, but must be contented if we can be so fortunate as to 
recognize it in its true character. It is true that we cannot 
construct nature, but if nature is a construction of spirit, is 
a priori and we recognize it in its true character, our philos- 
ophy of nature becomes a recognition of nature as an a priori 
construction. The principles which form the con lent of our 
Philosophy of Nature may be elaborated by us with the most 

Schelling, 8'dmmtliche Werke, Bd. II, S. 276. 



52 THE PHYSICS OP IDEALISM. 

painstaking scientific induction. Independently of our subjec- 
tive mode of attaining to the knowledge of these principles, 
however, the principles themselves must be regarded as in a 
logical connection and subordination, the conscious articula- 
tion of which for our minds is the setting forth of an a priori 
schematization of thought. The method of science may be a 
posteriori, but its ideal goal is an a priori one. 

D. Relation of the Idea of Matter to the Theory of Perception. 

A transcendental exposition of the idea of matter must 
show how the idea is connected with the functioning of the 
intellect, and point out its origin in human knowledge. It is 
this task that Kant failed to perform. His method was that 
of analyzing the idea of matter, conceived as that which fills 
space in a definite degree. But this analytical mode of pro- 
cedure is thoroughly objective, and does not establish the 
connection between the idea of matter and the intellect which 
engenders that idea. To this method Schelling opposes the 
synthetic construction of matter. The conception is to arise 
gradually before our eyes, and we are to find in its origin the 
ground of its necessity. 

But now, if we grant, with Kant, that matter is constituted 
of two forces, whence do we get the conception of those forces ? 
It is of course possible to answer, says Schelling, that we get 
it by inference. We do indeed get the conception by infer- 
ence, but a mere conception has no meaning. If the concep- 
tion is to possess any real significance, that must be gained 
from perception. It is only by the fact that conceptions are 
founded upon perceptions that they relate to reality. Granted 
that we are able to imagine attractive and repulsive forces — 
that fact only makes them a mere thought product. ^Yhat 
we wished to assert, however, was that matter, as composed 
of real forces, actually exists. Now reality is given us, not 
mediately by means of concepts, but immediatelj in percep- 
tion. If then attractive and repulsive forces are to be as- 



THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 53 

cribed to matter, the grounds of such attribution must be 
found in perception. If it can be shown from the character- 
istics of our perception that the object of perception must 
be regarded as the product of attractive and repulsive forces, 
these forces become conditions of the possibility of perception 
itself, and from this fact they derive the necessity with which 
they are thought. 

Thus Schelling argues, and at this point he makes a false 
step. He has shown that since it is only in perception that 
our ideas gain reality, perception must furnish the basis for 
any theory of the composition of matter. This harmless prop- 
osition is one with which empirical science can heartily 
agree. For the scientist it means that no theory not based 
upon the deliverances of perception can claim validity. 
Schelling understands it to mean, however, that we are to find 
a basis for the theory of matter in the theory of perception, 
rather than in the facts which it offers. The argument is not 
that we perceive matter as acting so-and-so, and are accord- 
ingly forced to infer that in order to render such action pos- 
sible its composition must be of a certain definite character. 
The argument rather is that since matter is the object of per- 
ception, the elements which go to construct perception must 
also go to construct the object of perception. Matter, then, 
will be constituted for physical theory in the same way as is 
perception for the science of knowledge. This reasoning is 
clearly erroneous. The discussion of the general implications 
of the subject-object relationship does not settle the theory 
of the more intimate constitution of matter. 

The error of supposing that the theory of perception affords 
the key for an a priori theory of matter is the source 1 of many 
of the difficulties encountered by the Naturphilosophie in the 
field of metaphysics. The position could be maintained only 
by the assertion of the identity of matter and cognition, and 
therefore rendered necessary the support given by the Philos- 
ophy of Identity. The error is of less importance for the 



54 THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 

Philosophy of Nature itself, however, from the fact that 
Schelling deceives himself in believing that his theory of the 
construction of matter is derived strictly from the theory of 
perception. In fact it is derived much as was that of Kant, 
by analyzing the idea of matter; and it is therefore able to 
maintain itself on its merits, until a deeper connection can be 
shown up with the principles of idealism. 

But now if, as Schelling holds, the reason for the necessary 
ascription of opposed forces to matter lies in the nature of 
perception, we are driven to ask, What is the nature of per- 
ception? Pure theoretical philosophy gives an adequate an- 
swer upon this point. For perception, there is presupposed 
on one side an activity of the intellect, an activity which is 
not checked or limited- by anything in its own nature. But 
on the other hand there must be opposed to this naturally 
infinite ideal activity another activity of mind, by virtue of 
which the first is checked. Only thus can a definite product 
arise. If the ideal activity were allowed to continue un- 
checked to infinity, it would remain a mental act, to be sure; 
but no mental fact, no determinate idea, and therefore no con- 
sciousness could ever arise. The real activity which opposes 
the ideal one is negative in the sense that all we can predicate 
of it is its limitation of the positive ideal activity. The prod- 
uct in which the two are united is the finite perception. 

From this view of the rise of perception it becomes clear 
that the world of phenomena results from an original strife of 
opposed spiritual activities. All reality (Wirklichkeit) is 
nothing else than that strife, in its infinite productions and 
reproductions. A world exists, then, only for spirit, and 
since the actual world is not entirely known by any finite 
spirit, it exists for an infinite spirit. On the one hand there 
is no objective existence (Dasein) without a spirit to know 
it, and on the other hand there is no spirit for which a world 
does not exist. 

At a higher grade of cognition the mind comes to view 



THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 55 

itself as that which knows, and to recognize its own freedom. 
In order to feel itself free and the subject of knowledge, how- 
ever, it must ascribe independence and objectivity to the prod- 
uct. It is in this way that the subjective and objective worlds 
become separated for consciousness. The objective world then 
stands before the mind as something independent of it. But 
in the object those opposed activities by which it was pro- 
duced in perception have now become permanent. They there 
appear as the forces of matter. These activities are of a 
spiritual nature, it is true; but their mental origin lies out- 
side of consciousness, since by them consciousness first comes 
into existence. They seem. then, to be not of mental nature, 
and even to be opposed to mind. In this light they appear to 
belong to the object by itself, regardless of a possible intel- 
ligence. 

Now we may concede. I suppose, that for idealistic philos- 
ophy force must be reduced to factors operative in conscious- 
ness. It cannot be, as with Spencer, a great Unknown lying 
beyond the phenomena, where conscious experience can never 
reach it, but must be implicated in the very fibre of expe- 
rience. But the particular manner in which Schelling wishes 
to pass from the theory of perception to the theory of matter 
should be closely scrutinized. Let us concede that for per- 
ception the world is formed by the opposition of two activities ; 
does it follow that after consciousness comes to distinguish 
a subjective and an objective world, and after we direct our 
attention solely to the theoretical construction of the objective 
world, we shall be able to find in that the same opposition of 
limiting and unlimited activities? By no means. 

According to the account given by Schelling in the Trans- 
cendental Idealism, it is the ideal activity, the activity which 
extends beyond the check given by its opposite, which becomes 
transformed for consciousness into the world of things. The 
real activity, on the other hand, as soon as the opposition be- 
tween the soul and the world of things becomes explicit, is 



56 THE PHYSICS OP IDEALISM. 

fixed for consciousness as the independent soul, the Ego-in- 
itself. So long, then, as no distinction between subject and 
object has occurred for consciousness, he who separates out 
from the rest any bit of cognitive experience will find implied 
in it both of the activities in question. But as yet it is im- 
possible to speak of a nature at all. In knowledge as it 
actually exists, however, the abstraction of the object from 
the subject has been carried out. Only after this abstraction 
has been made can we with any propriety discuss the theo- 
retical constitution of the world of objects. But in analyzing 
the process by which this distinction arises Schelling finds 
that only one activity is concerned in the construction of 
things conceived as independent of consciousness. That is the 
ideal activity, which, not stopping at the mere fact of percep- 
tion, goes on beyond the check and attempts to explain to the 
Ego the rational grounds for the perception. The thing-in- 
itself is therefore the shadow of the ideal activity of the self. 
So long as it remains purely objective, it has nothing to do 
with the opposed activity; although the theory of knowledge, 
^overcoming this abstraction, looks at it in its relation to the 
subject. For the purposes of the science and philosophy of 
nature, however, it is entirely legitimate to make this ab- 
straction. But if we take nature thus as independent, we 
have rid it of its subjection to the condition of perception, 
and are considering it purely theoretically. Theoretically, 
however, the objective world is wholly the construction of the 
ideal or explanation-demanding function of intelligence — 
the other activity is not operative in this field. To be sure 
the ideal activity, as one of the elements necessary to knowl- 
edge, implies the continual opposition of its antithetic ac- 
tivity. It is knowledge, however, and not the theoretical con- 
struction of the object itself, that implies this opposition. The 
theory of matter, then, must be carried out in entire depend- 
ence upon the rationalizing or ideal activity of mind. 

This conclusion is of much importance to our criticism of 



THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 57 

Schelling. The latter had espoused the cause of dynamism 
in physics, but regarded himself as bound by his metaphysics 
to a certain form of dynamism. Matter must be composed of 
an infinite expansive force and a limiting attractive force, a 
synthesis of the two being effected by the force of gravitation. 
This entire doctrine, which he called dynamics, Schelling re- 
garded as demonstrable a priori from the theory of knowledge. 
But we find that in his attempt so to connect the theory of 
matter with the theory of perception that the former may 
appear as deduced a priori he is guilty of a mistake in the 
inference. The deduction is faulty. 

The philosopher, then, who should accept the more general 
principles of idealism from which Schelling starts out, and 
even indorse his general conception of the problem and method 
of yaturphilosopliie, is not bound to give adherence to the 
particular theory of the construction of matter Avhich Schel- 
ling believed he had deduced from those principles. And this 
result may afford relief; for dynamism in the form presented 
by Kant and Schelling was not without its scientific diffi- 
culties. To chemists, in particular, it was obnoxious; for 
while chemistry opposes nothing to dynamical conceptions, as 
is clear from modern Energetics, yet it found in Schelling's 
theory no genuine foundation provided. In fact it remains 
a problem for close empirical study, the problem of the more 
intricate constitution of matter. That study may be led by 
philosophical motives, and its theoretical validity may in fact 
stand or fall with the validity of idealistic categories in phi- 
losophy, to such a degree that empirical study cannot be 
opposed absolutely to philosophical synthesis; but a specula- 
tive construction of materiality which aims to dispense with 
it altogether is in any case baseless. 

A second general line of criticism is opened up by the re- 
flection that the transcendentalist has imported these opposed 
activities into the theory of perception simply by reason of 
physical analogies. The categories which must be developed 



58 THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 

in order to treat the theory of knowledge are the highest and 
most involved that we gain in any type of science. In Hegel's 
formulation, the categories of the Notion are alone adequate 
to this problem ; all others, and particularly those of dy- 
namical science, make their shortcomings apparent in this 
field. And it is obvious that essentially this position must be 
held by philosophy, if the root conceptions of idealism are 
to be maintained as against a naturalistic mode of thought. 
If the knowing relation could be exhaustively defined in terms 
of physical categories, there would be an end -of idealism. No 
doubt all scientific categories, and therefore those in which 
the theory of perception and conception is expressed, are at- 
tempts to formulate insights into Universe Order; and no 
doubt physics finds it easiest to discuss universe order in 
terms of its categories. These categories, however, do not 
exhaust the implications of any single act of knowledge, and 
are in fact only abstractions from certain of the relatively 
simple forms in which the conception of Universe Order is 
revealed within our consciousness. The physical analysis of 
motions was already foreshadowed in the idea of opposing 
forces brought forward by Heraclitus, and the Protagorean 
theory of knowledge availed itself of this idea. It is easy to 
grasp, and is therefore popular. Empirical psychology uses 
it, although even psychology passes beyond it. Fichte's 
Science of KnOivledge picks up the ideas without criticism, be- 
cause its ultimate purpose is to pass beyond them. The fact 
that they figure in certain portions of the Wissemchaftslehre, 
then, by no means confers upon these opposing activities a 
fundamental philosophical importance. 

In short, the two opposing activities occur in the theory of 
perception chiefly by reason of physical analogies. They creep 
in without criticism. The thinker who should then turn 
about and "deduce" physical theories from them would be 
reasoning in a circle. Universe Order in some form is essen- 
tially involved in perception, and in some lower and more ab- 



THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 59 

stract form it will constitute the theme of physical theory ; but 
what form it shall take for physics must be determined by the 
analysis of physical experience, and not by the theory of per- 
ception. If we first wrap up in our theory of perception some 
special physical preconceptions, it is no great intellectual 
achievement to find them there again. 

E. Matter as a Force-Product. 

We have criticised Schelling's deduction of the theory of 
matter. It remains to examine that theory on its merits. 

The theory runs very closely in accordance with that of 
Kant, although it varies somewhat in different presentations. 
In general, however, Schelling conceives his task to be that of 
connecting the dynamical interpretation more closely with 
transcendental philosophy. At the close of the discussion 
of the line of thought already examined, he says : "We have 
now reached the point in our investigations where the idea 
of matter becomes capable of analytical handling, and the 
principles of dynamics can be derived from this idea alone. 
This work, however, has been done in Kant's Metaphysical 
Basis of the Natural Sciences with such evidence and com- 
pleteness that nothing further is left over to supply here." x 
Some additional comments are suggested, and in other pre- 
sentations a more considerable difference appears, but no es- 
sential injustice will be done to Schelling by discussing his 
theory in this form. 

Now there are two great difficulties with a physical dy- 
namism of the form here presented. In the first place, the two 
forces which it postulates are only elements of conceptual 
analysis, and we can gain no warrant for holding that they 
correspond to any real cleavage in the nature of things; 
that is of things as they are for absolute thought. In the 
second place, the entire dynamical view of nature presupposes 
certain non-dynamical or Platonic elements; so that however 

1 Schelling, S'dmmtliche Werke, Bd. II, S. 231. 



60 THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 

successful its polemic may be against the metaphysical hypo- 
statization of corpuscular mechanics, its own thought also is 
inadequate. 

The first objection does not assert that these forces are en- 
tirely arbitrary. On the contrary, just because all analysis 
really implies a previous synthesis, and because the elements 
which are analyzed into these forces were synthesized from 
experience, they do have reference to objective reality. But 
they are artificial expressions for the understanding of that 
which in reality is bound up together. 

Schelling partially recognizes that this is the case, but 
strives to avoid admitting it. "The fundamental forces of 
matter,'' he says, "are therefore nothing more than the ex- 
pression for the understanding of those original activities, 
the reflection, not the reality itself, which is in perception." * 
"In reflection we may separate the two; to think them as 
separated in reality is absurd." 2 Indeed, it is because they 
are concepts and not the realities, that we are able to make 
them definite as explanations of the nature of matter, and 
found upon them the science of dynamics. Passages of this 
sort may be multiplied, but are not entirely free from am- 
biguity. Against these may be placed a number of citations 
having an opposite tenor. Speaking of attractive force, he 
says, "But one must not think that one can derive it from some 
merely logical predicate of matter — I know not what — ac- 
cording to the law of contradiction alone. For the idea of 
matter is itself, in its origin, synthetic. A merely logical con- 
cept of matter is absurd, and the real concept of matter itself 
first arises through the synthesis of these forces by the 
imagination." 3 

The real basis for the apparent opposition between these 
passages is found in Schelling's claim that Kant's theory had 
been left as purely analytical and logical; that his own, how- 

1 Schelling-, Sammtliche Werke, Bd. II, S. 228. 

2 Ibid, S. 234. 

3 Ibid, S, 235. 



THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 61 

ever, by pointing out the original synthesis of opposed activities 
in perception, had changed the entire standing of the concep- 
tion and given it real import. If we take the notion of matter 
as it stands in ordinary consciousness as the basis for 
analysis, as did Kant, Schelling agrees, both in the passages 
quoted and in others that might be cited, that the distinction 
is in danger of representing merely a self-made opposition of 
ideas, and not a real opposition of objective forces. But since 
his own transcendental deduction, which was to save the day 
for the attractive and repulsive forces, has been found inade- 
quate to do so, dynamism has not succeeded in safeguarding 
the objective significance of its two historic basal forces. 

This result does not impugn the principles of dynamism, 
but simply the form which it took with these writers, and 
readily tends to take. It reinforces the conclusion already 
drawn, that for a consistent idealism the theory of matter is 
to be drawn, not from a priori reasonings, but from a study 
of the implications of physical experience. Idealism holds, to 
be sure, that knowledge is idealization, and that no scientific 
theory could take from except through the leadership of a 
conception of Absolute Order — an element of knowledge not 
copied from sense. In dealing with the concept of matter, 
then, speculative thought may direct its attention not so much 
to the properties manifested as to the ground in which they are 
founded. Analysis consists in so working out the thought of 
this ground of connection that it can serve as an explanation 
of the manner in which the qualities exhibited in sense do 
actually cohere and reciprocally condition one another. It is 
obvious that such an analysis can be carried out only on the 
basis of the properties actually to be explained. It is the 
Atiseinandersetzen of the implications involved in the notion 
of a general ground for the properties of matter, and if these 
implications are to be fully set forth account must bo taken 
of all the modes of behavior of matter which are to find ex- 
planation therein. 



62 THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 

An analytical process which is carried on thus with constant 
reference to the synthesis of elements by the aid of which the 
idea of matter is built up cannot be charged with dealing in 
purely self-made conceptions. It is true that the elements 
into which it resolves matter are concepts. But unless we 
are to be plunged into a thoroughgoing phenomenalism — an 
impossible philosophy — properly formed concepts must have 
an objective significance. The possibility of science in any 
form rests upon our right to formulate concepts which are 
applicable to facts. We can never reach a principle of ex- 
planation, and so a true science, except as we go beyond the 
facts presented. This is the transcendental factor in science. 
Tn so doing we rely upon the conviction that things are in 
reality constructed upon universal principles, our problem 
being only to find out what in particular those principles are. 
Here the transcendental element is specifying itself as the 
dominant universal, a rational idea which judgment is postu- 
lating as real. In adopting any principle of explanation we 
can be certain that it is the correct one only by repeatedly 
testing it to be sure that the facts readily arrange themselves 
in accordance with it. The distinctions which we make are 
primarily ours, and it is only after working out our theory to 
its results and testing it fully and repeatedly by the facts that 
we may be permitted to maintain that the distinctions obtain 
in reality precisely as we have drawn them. 

It follows that the forces which we are to attribute to matter 
even as the result, of an analysis of what is involved in matter 
must issue only from a careful study of physical phenomena. 
Whenever facts are discovered which render it evident that a 
division like that made by Kant does not represent reality, a 
new foundation of the concept is in order. Hartmann is there- 
fore justified, so far as philosophy is concerned, when he sup- 
poses that atoms of one kind possess only attractive force, 
those of another kind only repulsive force. He has dispensed 
with the idea of a purely negative force, an attraction, neces- 



THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 63 

sary to limit the expansion of the repulsive force, and supposes 
that expansion exerts from a given centre only a definite quan- 
tity of force. The absurd view of Kant and Schelling that an 
attractive force is necessary to keep repulsion from expanding 
the body to infinity is rejected. For Hartmann the attraction 
exerted by body atoms increases inversely as the square of 
the distance, while the repellent ether atoms exert a force of 
resistance which increases inversely as a higher power of the 
distance, probably from the third to the fifth. By Boscovich 
and others it was supposed that the atoms exert an attraction 
for one another at molar distances, but at molecular distances 
a repulsion which increases very rapidly with the decrease of 
the intervening distance. It is clear that none of these specu- 
lations are ruled out by metaphysical considerations. The 
only criterion of their value, then, is the success which they 
meet in introducing order into facts. 

The second objection to dynamism urged that other factors 
besides force were necessary to the theory of matter. This 
objection has different values according to the two different 
levels at which it is raised. 

When raised by the popular mind, or even by most partisans 
of the mechanical theory of matter, it expresses a truth in 
form so feeble and obscure as to be almost useless. One comes 
to speak of matter and its forces, and then supposes that in- 
dependently of his thought and language matter and force 
bear such a relation to one another as these words imply. A 
separation of matter from force takes place, which leaves it 
incomprehensible how they can act together. This is a com- 
mon result of the metaphysics of ordinary thought. The mind 
looks for something which shall be permanent and the common 
ground of our changing sensations. The mechanical concep- 
tion of matter, as inert extended substance, explains perma- 
nence, and furnishes a general ground for sensation. The 
element of change is not sufficiently illuminated by this con- 
ception, however, and the idea of force as a cause of motion 



64 THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 

is added. With these two factors popular thought can get on ; 
but it sees in the conception of force alone no explanation of 
the permanence and law which rule in nature. Activity may 
well be caprice. 

To physicists, however, it soon becomes apparent that an 
ultimate duality of force and matter is not defensible. The 
effort ensues to eliminate one of the conceptions, and corpus- 
cular mechanics, as Schelling called it, eliminates force. It 
assumes matter as being in motion. Maxwell says, "Force is 
but one aspect of that mutual action between bodies which is 
called by Newton Action and Reaction." 1 Force becomes a 
mere formula, valuable for the expression of mathematical re- 
lations, but not the concept of some real thing causing the 
relation. A thoroughgoing phenomenalism is thus applied to 
the idea of force, even when it is not so applied to matter and 
motion. 

Now phenomenalism is an excellent methodological device in 
a special science, especially if it is fairly and evenly applied; 
but it is of no avail as a thoroughgoing theory of matter. For 
every judgment by its very nature claims to be a declaration 
regarding truth; and this primal claim of reason is indefeas- 
ible. A consistent and thoroughgoing phenomenalism is impos- 
sible. In fact, then, no category of science is wholly phe- 
nomenal in its import; in each the real order of the world is 
more or less successfully seized. And accordingly few minds 
can really hold the thought of the phenomenality of all sci- 
entific ideas. The attempt to treat force as phenomenal usu- 
ally issues in ascribing reality to matter, motion, and space. 

But this course cannot be followed out, for it leads into new 
and insuperable difficulties. Modern physics is founded upon 
the doctrine of the conservation of energy. It is only by means 
of the distinction between potential and kinetic energy, how- 
ever, that this principle can be made to work. The active or 
kinetic energy involved in any physical change is not neces- 

1 Maxwell, Matter and Motion, CI. 



THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 65 

sarily conserved as kinetic, but may become potential, and 
vice versa. But if energy is to be denned as a relation of 
masses and velocities, the assertion that the energy involved 
is conserved would necessarily mean that in a set of physical 
changes the solution of the force-formula, a relation of masses 
and velocities, will always be the same. But since the mass 
must remain constant, on atomistic principles the velocities 
must also remain constant. In other words, all energy must be 
active at every moment. This involves the denial of potential 
energy, and the reduction of all force in the world to kinetic 
energy. That the principles of corpuscular mechanics, strictly 
carried out, lead to this result, has been recognized. Stallo 
says, "The proposition here insisted upon is irrecusable by 
any consistent advocate of the mechanical theory." x Tait, 
speaking of the classical theory of corpuscular physics founded 
by Le Sage, says, "The most singular thing about it is that if 
it be true, it will probably lead us to regard all kinds of 
energy as ultimately kinetic." 2 And yet a reduction of all 
energy to the kinetic form, on these purely a priori grounds, 
is not satisfactory, since it is only by the aid of the assump- 
tion of energy in the potential form that the principle of the 
conservation of energy can be applied to the facts. It is not 
as if the corpuscular theory had devised some other way of 
meeting the difficulty. We are dealing with a sharp opposition 
between clear deductions from its theory and the established 
principles of physics. 

We may conclude that the attempt to hypostatize matter 
to the exclusion of force is incapable of success, and that the 
division of the physical object into two real principles, matter 
and force, is unsound. Every static quality displayed by a 
thing may be explained, and must be explained by some power 
which the thing possesses to make itself good in its system. 

At a higher level, however, a more serious type of objection to 

1 Stallo, Modern Physics, p. 67. 

2 Tait, Lecture on Force. 

5 



66 THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 

the sufficiency of dynamism arises, and renders necessary, as 
I judge, important modifications of its doctrine. Stall o, after 
urging that matter per se is indistinguishable from absolute 
nothingness, adds the following: "And, on the other hand, 
pure force is equally nothing; for if we reduce the mass upon 
which a given force, however small, acts, to its limit — or, math- 
ematically expressed, until it becomes infinitely small — the 
consequence is that the velocity of the resulting motion is 
infinitely great, and that the thing is neither here nor there, 
but everywhere — that there is no real presence. It is im- 
possible, therefore, to construct matter by a synthesis of forces. 
And it is incorrect to say, with Bain, that 'force and matter 
are not two things, but one thing,' the truth being that force 
and inertia are conceptual integrants of matter and neither is 
in any proper sense a fact. The radical fallacy of the corpus- 
cular as well as the dynamical theory consists in the delu- 
sion that the conceptual elements of matter can be grasped as 
separate and real entities. The corpuscular theorists take the 
element of inertia and treat it as real by itself, while Boscovich, 
Faraday, and all those who define atoms or molecules as 
'centers of force' seek to realize the corresponding element, 
force, as an entity by itself. In both cases products of ab- 
straction are taken for kinds of reality." x 

This passage clearly presents one of the dangers, or perhaps 
shortcomings, of dynamical theory, namely, a conception of 
force so narrow and poor that it falls far short of supplying 
the ground of all physical qualities. So long as force is defined 
simply as the cause of motion, the definition loses sight of the 
particular kind of motion caused. And yet we never expe- 
rience pure motion. Any experiential motion has some defi- 
nite direction and velocity. Force may be as Schelling con- 
ceives the absolute productivity of nature passing over into 
objects, but scientific knowledge tells always of Cosmic Order, 
and force, if it is to construct matter, must bear within itself 

1 Stallo, Modern Physics, p. 161. 



THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 67 

the orderliness and system of the world. Schelling has said 
that it must explain permanence; and if it is to do this the 
ordinary dynamical categories are inadequate. The principle 
of change alone cannot construct a rational cosmos, as 
Heraclitus found. The law which ordered his flux became 
for Plato the ideal order of the universe, and eyen the restora- 
tion of dynamism by Aristotle did not dethrone it. To 
Leibniz, also, harmony was more ultimate than dynamism, so 
that every force energized according to its own peculiar rela- 
tionship to the plan of the universe. It is strange that Kant, 
whose theory of the categories restores the Platonic conception 
of the synthetic identity of form in all scientific knowledge, 
had at the time when he wrote the Metaphysic of Nature no 
consciousness of the relativity of dynamism to systematic 
order. A close logical analysis makes it apparent, however, 
that dynamical categories alone are never sufficient. If an 
atom is to be conceived as a force centre, we are compelled to 
add at once that it is a centre which energizes according to a 
characteristic law or program, and that the formula of its 
action is the most essential thing about it. And then we arc 
back upon Aristotelian rather than Heraclitic grounds. 

This line of thought became gradually clear to Schelling. 
however, and was even more explicit in the subsequent de- 
velopment of idealism by Hegel. Schelling says that Natur- 
philosophie aims to explain permanence. In the Introduction 
to the Outline of a System of the Philosophy of Nature he 
handles the problem more fully. He treats the conditions of 
static order which arise in nature 1 as conditions of Indiffer- 
ence, involving an equipoise of forces. This is a secondary 
thing, an effect of dynamism. Deeper than Indifference, how- 
ever, and deeper also than the dynamism which generates In- 
difference, is the order which governs the productivity of 
nature. The name which Schelling gives to this order, Iden- 
tity, serves to indicate its transcendence over the seethe and 
turmoil of the dynamism of nature. Nature as product maD- 



68 THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 

ifests more than activity, it manifests system and order. Yes, 
but this requires the thought that nature as productivity is 
essentially order-imposing. Every dynamical concept will 
therefore require to be read in this light. 

The difficulty which Schelling experienced in working out 
the conception of an Absolute Identity led to Hegel's formu- 
lation. With him the Absolute is more distinctly conceived 
as rich with differential detail, but all members are held within 
the clutch of the system-ordaining One. And now, the Hegelian 
Logic sublates the dynamical categories as truly as it does the 
categories of corpuscular mechanics, or even of common sense. 
True, they are higher in the scale, and carry a richer insight 
than the others mentioned. Yet not much can be claimed for 
them on that account ; for they belong, after all, to the second 
only of the three great stages of philosophical insight, the doc- 
trine of Essence. They have not attained to the explicit con- 
sciousness of the Notion, the immanent ideal order of the 
universe. They fall short, therefore, of the characteristic in- 
sight of idealism ; and however valuable they may be as means 
for tearing thought away from the cruder types of realistic 
metaphysic, they must be confessed to be inadequate to the 
thoroughgoing treatment of any fact whatever. Idealism is 
not engaged in teaching that nature is the manifestation of 
"blind force." That doctrine accords better with realism, 
especially if the latter be of a "transfigured" type. Things 
are the unfolding of reason, plan, concept ; and whatever place 
activity may take in their generation, the philosophical ac- 
count of the activity must never lose sight of the plan and 
order which give meaning and rationality to the process. In 
the realm of physical concepts, the elements of order are in- 
terpreted through such concepts as mass, inertia, and other 
mechanical categories, as well as being bound up in every 
thought more distinctly dynamical. It is only a revised dy- 
namism, then, that can hope to cope with the entire range of 
physical theory. 



THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. P)9 

The general result of our discussion of matter as a force- 
product, then, has been to show that the construction of mat- 
ter from two forces has not sufficient objective warrant, but 
is in danger of affording a purely subjective analysis; and that 
dynamism in any form, although helpful to idealism against 
its traditional adversaries, is not ultimate idealism, and is not 
by itself sufficient to the thorough speculative treatment of 
physical facts. The only force which can satisfy the demand 
is a force which takes up into its definition relations of uni- 
verse order. 

F. Gravitation as a Systematizing Factor. 

In his treatment of gravitation Schelling breaks away from 
the doctrine supported by Kant in the Metaphysic of Nature. 
We have thus far spoken as if for Schelling two forces in oppo- 
sition were sufficient for the construction of matter. In his 
earlier works that is the case. When he wrote the Outlines. 
however, he had been led to see that Kant's attractive force did 
not furnish an adequate account of gravitation. At that time 
he still held that attraction and repulsion were sufficient for 
the construction of matter, so long as one regards it merely 
as that which fills space, and that with these dynamical theory 
would be satisfied. When we come to mechanics, however, and 
regard matter as in motion and interaction, we must have a 
third force to bind all physical nature together. He regarded 
gravitation at that time not as something essential to the very 
existence of matter, but rather as necessaiw for its interaction. 
In the Transcendental Idealism, however, gravitation becomes 
the construing agent by virtue of which attraction and repul- 
sion are held in opposition, thus making possible the existence 
of matter. It is then of more vital importance to the construc- 
tion of the physical object than the other two forces. As litis 
development of Schelling's thought indicates an efforl to supply 
in some degree the deficiencies in dynamical theory discussed 
in our last section, it calls for a brief consideration. 



70 THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 

In order to appreciate the grounds of Schelling's criticism of 
Kant upon this point, it will be necessary to recur to Kant's 
view of gravitation. The latter had maintained that "the 
possibility of matter requires an attractive force as its second 
real fundamental force." 1 The reason for this assertion is 
the familiar one that expansion cannot limit itself, and must 
therefore dissipate matter to infinity unless checked by an 
opposed attraction. In this Schelling agreed with him, but 
became more cautious after he had noted the paralogism into 
which it led Kant. Accordingly he rejects the name attractive 
force in his later works, substituting for it, at least when he 
wishes to be precise, the term retarding force. The correction 
is significant and well founded, since the only reason for as- 
suming the second force was to secure a principle upon which 
we may explain the retarding of expansion. We have seen 
that our inability to explain this retarding force from the 
mere concept of expansion does not justify us in supposing that 
the accessory principle which for ideal purposes we bring in 
is in fact distinct from the principle at work in repulsion. 
Kant says, however, that attraction is the second "wesentliche 
Grundkraft" of matter. Schelling admits that the reason 
given by Kant for holding attraction as real as repulsion is 
insufficient, but, as has been shown, finds grounds of his own 
for maintaining the same conclusion. For Schelling, how- 
ever, who is here more consistent than Kant, attraction is only 
a negative force, it merely retards expansion. 

On Kant's view, attraction is distinguished from repulsion 
by the manner in which it works. Repulsion, working out- 
wardly from a centre, acts continuously up to the point at 
which it is checked. Beyond that point it does not act, simply 
because it has been checked. One might suppose that it would 
work even beyond the point at which it became so weakened 
as to come to an equilibrium with its opposite, although of 
course owing to the preponderance of attraction outside the 

x Kant, Werke, ed. Rosenkranz, Bd. V, S. 358. 



THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 71 

periphery of limitation it could have little effect. Xo suffi- 
cient reason is given either by Kant or Schelling why repulsion 
cannot act at a distance, and according to the theories of 
Boscovich and v. Hartmann such action does take place. 

Kant urges, however, that attraction must act at a distance, 
since the making definite of any given quantity of matter, and 
therefore the establishment of things as distant from one an- 
other at all, is a result of the action of attraction. Contact, 
then, presupposes a previous attraction which made the bodies 
definite in form and mass. But since contact depends upon 
the previous action of attraction, we cannot suppose that the 
possibility of attraction depends upon contact. It must be 
prior to contact, and act immediately at a distance. 

It ought to be noticed, however, that before contact can take 
place two things are necessary. In the first place, bodies must 
exist having definite determinations and boundaries. On the 
reasoning of Kant and Sclielling, this condition depends upon 
the action of attractive or retarding force. But now in the 
second place, bodies must do more than exist — they must be 
so drawn or thrown together in space that their boundaries 
may touch. This last condition is not necessarily satisfied by 
the action of a force, the only reason for assuming which was 
to explain the definite limitation of bodies. It does not follow 
from the analysis of the idea of a particle of matter in a 
static condition that all such particles must gravitate towards 
one another. We have to learn it first from the fact that 
they do. 

Kant declares that attraction not only acts at a distance 
but that it is a penetrating force; that is, by means of it one 
body exerts force upon the parts of another body, immediately, 
and without regard to intervening bodies. He supposes that 
this property follows from the concept of attraction, and his 
proof of it consists in showing that attraction can be de- 
stroyed neither by intervening bodies nor by extent of space. 
That the attraction of one bodv is able to seize upon the mass 



72 THE PHYSIOS OP IDEALISM. 

of another, and draw it toward its own centre, he assumes 
without question. 

At this point Schelling joins issue. He says, "Kant, in his 
Metaphysical Basis of the Natural Sciences, calls the attractive 
force a penetrative force, but he does this" only for the reason 
that he regards the attractive force as already gravity, whereby 
also he requires only two forces for the construction of matter, 
while we deduce three as necessary. The attractive force 
thought purely, that is, as a mere factor of construction, is to 
be sure a force which works immediately at a distance, but not 
a penetrative force, since there is nothing to penetrate where 
nothing exists. It first gets its penetrative properties from 
the fact that it is taken up into gravitation. Gravitation itself 
is not identical with attractive force, although the latter neces- 
sarily enters into it," * 

The ground of Schelling's dissent from Kant appears more 
clearly from another passage : "Now in order to explain how 
the production of nature is originally directed upon something 
definite, there must indeed be something negative assumed in 
every infinitely productive activity, which negative, if all pro- 
ductive activity of nature is only an evolution from one orig- 
inal involution, must be the very principle which retards the 
evolution of nature. In short, there must be an original re- 
tarding principle. To explain this retarding principle, to show 
why nature develops itself with a finite rapidity, will, it is 
true, appear as the highest task of the Philosophy of Nature. 
But only on the lowest standpoint, that of the consideration 
of the product as mere space-filling, can that retarding prin- 
ciple appear as attractive force. And now moreover this prin- 
ciple serves only to explain the finite, the determinate in gen- 
eral in natural production, but not to explain how one object 
comes to be finite in relation to another, how for instance the 
earth is heavy towards the sun." 2 

1 Schelling-, Sammtliche Werke, Bd. Ill, S. 444. 

2 Ibid, S. 102. 



THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 73 

Gravitation, then, cannot be explained from the idea of mat- 
ter as that which by virtue of moving forces fills space. Schil- 
ling develops a theory of gravitation which is to supplant 
the hailstone theory of Le Sage and the two- forces theory of 
Kant. For him the nature and origin of gravitation must be 
considered in connection with the development of the sidereal 
and solar systems. 

Gravitation is an immaterial principle, as Kant and the 
Newtonians asserted, not a material principle, as Le Sage 
maintained. It is a force by means of which the whole uni- 
verse is bound together, and constituted one. It therefore 
pervades all matter, and extends throughout space to infinity. 
Ultimately, then, it has its source and ground in the unity of 
nature as subject. In its application to the particular bodies 
in a definite system, however, it is mediated by the command- 
ing central body of that system. Schelling develops the idea 
of a sphere of affinity which is ruled by a body of commanding 
mass, and within which smaller bodies are subjected to power 
exerted by the central mass. This sphere of affinity is analo- 
gous to the field of force determined by the magnet. Just as 
in the magnet's field of force iron filings arrange themselves 
in definite positions with regard to one another, so in the 
sphere of affinity of the sun all parts of the solar system grav- 
itate towards one another. 

The source of this universal gravitation cannot be found 
merely in the bodies themselves. "There must certainly rule 
throughout the whole of nature one force, by which nature 
is preserved in its identity, a force which we have not yet de- 
rived, but to which we see ourselves now for the first time 
driven." * Such a force cannot be merely the mode of action 
of distinct bodies, it must be also something more universal. 
Now Schelling maintains that "what holds together a mass 
as a mere aggregate of bodies existing beside and beneath one 
another must be such an influence of a mass outside them as 



Schelling-, Summtliche Werke, Bd. Ill, S. 105. 



74 THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 

gives all their parts a tendency towards one another." 1 This 
mutual tendency of all" parts towards one another, since it 
always remains a tendency, and never attains to union, can be 
really explained only as a common tendency of all to union 
with a third. Their reciprocal tendency towards one another, 
then, would be only apparent, just as the magnet gives iron 
filings an orderly arrangement with regard to one another. 
This common tendency to union with a third is then the bind- 
ing principle which holds all parts together. This must neces- 
sarily be something outside the mass, and in the case of the 
earth, for instance, must be the sun. 

In this way the sun influences all bodies in the solar system, 
its sphere of affinity, and produces the appearance of a recip- 
rocal gravitation. The power of the sun to do this, however, 
is merely delegated. The fact that the particles of the earth 
gravitate towards the sun can be explained only by a third 
mass which by its sphere of affinity governs the sun. Thus we 
have an absolute despotism, in which the sun is, to be sure, 
the viceroy of the one absolute dictator so far as concerns the 
solar system, but it really only mediates to the bodies of the 
solar system a unifying power derived from the sources of 
nature itself. 

It remained for Schelling to show in what relation this uni- 
versal binding force of gravitation stood to the other forces in 
the constitution of matter. Like the others, gravitation also 
must be "transeenden tally deduced." Now it had -been shown 
that perception implies two opposed mental activities, but im- 
plies also an activity really more important than the other two, 
by means of which the latter are synthesized within one con- 
sciousness. This third activity is called by Schelling the pro- 
ductive perception, by Fichte the productive imagination. 
Taking up into itself as factors the real and ideal activities, 
the functioning of productive perception forms the true cord 
of conscious experience. Now just as repulsion and attraction 

1 Schelling, Sammtliche Werke, Bd. Ill, S. 106. 



THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 75 

had for Schelling represented ideal and real activities, grav- 
itation represents the power by which the two are synthesized. 
"Just as the activity which is checked within the limit and 
the activity which goes out beyond the limit to infinity are 
only the factors of productive perception, so also repulsive and 
attractive force, which are separated only by their common 
boundary, are only the factors for the construction of matter, 
but not the constructing principle itself. This latter can only 
be a third force which synthesizes the two and answers to the 
synthetic activity of the Ego in perception. Only by means 
of this third synthetic activity was it comprehensible how the 
two activities could be posited as absolutely opposed to one 
another in one and the same subject. The force which corre- 
sponds to this activity in the object will therefore be that by 
means of which those two really opposed forces become posited 
in the same subject." 1 

We have already seen that this line of argument in Schelling 
possesses little value. It is significant, however, as showing 
in what light he regarded gravitation. Kant had attempted 
to render easy the conception of an immaterial principle of 
gravitation by showing that such a principle, in the form of at- 
traction, is essential to the existence of a single particle of 
matter. Schelling points out with great clearness and success 
that this attempt must result in failure. His criticism of Kant 
on this point is decisive. He shows that gravitation must be 
a cosmic principle, not to be inferred from' the concept of a 
piece of matter at rest, a concept which abstracts from all rela- 
tions to other bodies. 

It cannot be said, however, that the theory which Schelling 
offers in place of Kant's view is of great value as an explana- 
tion of gravitation. It does little more than to reassert in 
general terms the truth that gravitation does obtain, adding 
that it is an immaterial principle by means of which one body 
attracts another at a distance. This is no more than the New 

'Schelling-, S'dmmtliche Werke, Bd. Ill, S. 443-444. 

LOfC. 



76 THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 

tonians had said, but their view had been confessedly inad- 
equate. 

But the most significant thing about Schelling's treatment 
of gravitation is the fact that it indicates the point at which 
a physical dynamism of the type offered by Kant logically 
passes over into a deeper recognition of a systematizing order 
to which each material particle is organic. This thought in 
some form is unavoidable, and while physical theory must take 
it in an abstract form, without elaborating or analyzing it as 
thoroughly as does metaphysics, yet it must appear in the 
philosophy of physics. Schelling's achievement has been 
scarcely more than that of indicating a problem — perhaps not 
even that, in very clear form. Certainly his own discussion is 
inadequate to the solution of the problem of gravitation. One 
might infer that empirical research alone can throw light upon 
this problem, as upon every problem of the theory of matter. 
The remarkably backward condition of the doctrine of gravita- 
tion in modern physics, however, in the midst of an enormous 
mass of empirical material, helps us to recognize that the prob- 
lem differs somewhat from ordinary physical problems. The 
familiar categories of physics are not adequate to cope with 
it, since it involves something which these categories all pre- 
suppose. One may expect that the problem will be attacked 
one day with great keenness of analysis and with a full knowl- 
edge of physical fact, in such a way as to yield gratifying re- 
sults. Such results, however, can hardly fail to modify our 
present conceptions of matter, by dwelling upon the relation 
of each particle to a systematizing whole, and showing the 
manner in which this relationship becomes effective. It is 
true that there are deeper and more significant forms of sys- 
tematic relation than gravitation can present; but until we 
have gained some fuller insight into this we do ill in passing- 
it over so lightly as is generally the case. The problem is a 
real one and an intelligible one. It is not being treated by 
physics — it seems to fall outside physics. In equal degree it 



THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 77 

falls outside philosophy. Yet it is on the borderland of the 
two and the completion of either physics or philosophy will 
require its more thorough handling. 

It is true, of course, that for idealism the only real systema- 
tizing factor is the Absolute. But this thought comes in only 
when we ask for the complete meaning of the order in the 
world. The sciences read that order at various levels, and 
physics, in particular, reads it at such a level that the defini- 
tion of physical systems as gravitational masses becomes of 
rational importance. It is by the appreciation of the way in 
which a theoretical analysis of matter leads inevitably from 
the dynamism of the parts to a recognition of the dynamical 
influence of the systematizing whole, and the necessity of stat- 
ing that influence in intelligible and workable terms, that one 
may see the significance of Schelling's treatment of gravita- 
tion. 



78 THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 



CHAPTER III 



CONCLUSION. 



It is impossible, of course, to treat exhaustively in a mono- 
graph the interrelations of physical science and a world- view 
like idealism. The entire development of the discussion after 
Schelling must be left out of our explicit notice, although we 
have attempted to make use of that development in our analy- 
sis and criticism of Schelling. Many interesting chapters by 
the author of the NaturphUosophie himself must also be omit- 
ted, entailing a loss which is particularly significant in regard 
to the philosophical meaning of the atomic theory. 

The limits of a monograph do not forbid, however, an esti- 
mate of the spirit of idealism, and its bearing upon the general 
view of the material world which has been organized into 
modern physics. It is this inquiry to which our interest is 
here restricted, and which we now wish to sum up in general 
terms. 

Two things seem to have stood out throughout the entire 
course of the investigation : in the first place, the legitimacy, 
and even insistency, of such a transvaluation of physical values 
as was attempted in the Avork of the great idealistic philoso- 
phers of a century ago; and in the second place, the want of 
success on their part in making good the particular form of 
transvaluation which they proposed. 

The legitimacy of the problem will be denied, of course, by 
all thinkers who regard the work of philosophical criticism 
as at all times baseless and impertinent. Such thinkers are 
accustomed to regard knowledge given in scientific form as 
the highest and most perfect to which man can attain, and as 
neither demanding nor permitting any critical revision at the 



THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 79 

hands of the professed student of the theory of knowledge or 
Of metaphysics. With such it is not necessary to reason here, 
since the mass of discussion in contemporary epistemology is 
directed against precisely this position, the dogmatism of 
science. 

With thinkers not under the sway of an unphilosophical dog- 
matism, however, the conviction is general that the sciences 
of nature, although highly organized and successful, are lim- 
ited in a certain characteristic manner. Their very success, 
and their power to still farther^aniplify their success, have 
been purchased at the expense of a very definite limitation of 
their problem. Certain ways of looking at things and cate- 
gories of interpretation have been taken for explanatory pur- 
poses, because very successful at a certain level. The entire 
range of fact susceptible of illumination by some one category 
of interpretation, or some closely connected group of cate- 
gories, becomes then the subject matter, of one science. Facts 
not readily amenable to those categories simply fall outside 
the science, although they may be more or less closely related. 

Now it results from this organization of knowledge that the 
treatment of its subject matter given by any special science is 
abstract. The science treats the facts; but it treats them from 
a special point of view and for special interests. It does not 
treat them in their full import and meaning, that is, in their 
full truth. What a given science offers is true, no doubt, if 
the work of the science has been properly done; yet if it is 
taken as the truth, it becomes misleading by reason of its ab- 
stractness. The categories in which any special science moves 
readily are too cheap and partial to express the truth of any 
fact, since every fad embodies the universal system of the 
world. Science, by reason of the necessary abstractness <>f its 
mode of treatment, puts forward only half-truths; and these 
half-truths, if carelessly or uncritically handled, arc in great 
danger of becoming falsehoods. In large measure I he defect 
of any given science is that of the incomplete and abstract 



80 THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 

character of its constitutive categories, and therefore of its 
possible insight; in part, however, this carries with it the 
further fact that some aspects of the assumptions taken by the 
science are simply not true, but misrepresent the real. They 
are valuable, then, chiefly for their power to aid in freeing the 
subject matter from perplexing relations. Accordingly, the 
view of affairs presented by any science can never be taken 
as ultimate. It needs a peculiar type of revision, by means of 
which the defect arising from the necessary abstraction of 
thought may be supplemented. 

To some degree the revision is carried out by the discussion 
of the subject matter by cognate sciences. As the system of 
the sciences approaches more nearly to completion, this cor- 
rection may be expected to be more efficacious than it is today. 
At present, however, the chasm between the different sciences 
is too great to be effectively bridged in this way. We are not 
able to make one set of abstractions fit nicely into another, 
in such wise that a philosophy of high solidarity results. Even 
certain sciences which seem to do so reveal under critical 
analysis great chasms and faults. In any case, however, the 
genuine union of the sciences will require a modification of 
those outstanding conceptions which now, in order to furnish 
greater distinctness, have been made harsh in their antago- 
nisms toward other elements in the scheme of truth. In any 
case, that is, a transvaluation of scientific values must be ef- 
fected, even if it be carried out by the sciences themselves as 
they approach completion. 

Philosophy has long asserted its claim to exercise an espe- 
cially significant function in the work of unifying the sciences, 
although this claim is often rejected by the scientist. Philos- 
ophy performs this function by pointing out the central fact 
in the nature of scientific synthesis, the fact that it is a syn- 
thesis within conscious experience, and that all concept build- 
ing is therefore relative to the unity of experience. Philosophy 
also aids the mental sciences to establish their relative rights, 



THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 81 

which would otherwise be jeopardized by the more objective 
sciences. But the main significance of philosophy, after all, 
in the matter of a synthesis of the sciences, is its demonstration 
of the limitations of inadequate and one-sided conceptions. In 
this field it has special power, and the rigor and keenness of 
its dialectic surpass anything which science is accustomed to 
bring to bear in this interest. 

The defect of the work of philosophy is apparent at once : it 
is not strongly constructive. It can furnish nothing but an 
ideal of synthesis, a conception of truth and system. Beyond 
that its function is purely that of the police power. Philos- 
ophy by itself can throw little light upon any of the more 
concrete problems in the synthesis of the sciences. The gen- 
uine principles of the theory of knowledge are compatible with 
any genuine knowledge whatever, and do not reinforce this 
doctrine rather than that, so long as both doctrines are prop- 
erly drawn. In short, a philosophy which has maintained as 
philosophy its aloofness from the special problems of science, 
and driven its business as the metaphysics of knowledge in 
general, has no language with which to discuss intelligibly the 
real questions of the larger meaning of the truths which are 
abstractly handled in science. It is too far away; it cannot 
descend into the details of the discussion. Not only do its 
students want the special training required — that may be 
corrected. Rather, philosophy itself, as a separate discipline, 
wants the language, the points of intellectual attachment, and 
the competence for the task. It results that philosophical crit- 
icism directed upon scientific problems too often takes the 
form of mere faultfinding, unable to suggest a better concep- 
tion in place of the one under criticism. 

It is true that philosophy should leave to science the righl 
to pursue its own course, to develop its own concept ions in a 
purely objective manner, independently of metaphysical theory. 
The value of the separation of philosophy from science, for the 
purpose of the better handling of questions in each field, is aot 
6 



82 THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 

to be denied, and when that separation has been made, science 
is to be driven as science, and not as a mixture of science and 
speculation. Within the field of science, then, philosophy 
should assert no claim to displace one conception in the interest 
of another which has greater speculative favor. Science may 
be abstract and one-sided, but it is preeminently clear, close 
to fact, and manageable. It should be permitted to build 
without interference the structure which its virtues and its 
methods warrant. The blending of science with philosophy 
sacrifices the clearness and coherency of science, and, if it is 
offered as a substitute to displace the body of the sciences, can 
yield only confusion. 

At the same time, a blending of science and philosophy must 
be worked out; for only thus can the great intellectual prob- 
lem of our time be solved. We need a synthesis of our knowl- 
edges; the extreme specialization and decentralization of our 
intellectual world demands correction. Science itself cannot 
furnish that synthesis, because of the dogmatic harshness and 
mutual repulsion of many of the hypostatized abstractions in 
terms of which it moves; although, as the scientist notes the 
implications of unified system within the body of knowledge 
which he is constructing he continually deludes himself and 
others with the mocking hope that a synthetic view is about 
to be attained by the empirical sciences as such. He has failed 
to note that the difficulty lies not simply in the lacunae of 
our knowledge, but especially in the abstraetness and mutual 
antagonisms of the constitutive categories of our specialties. 
And philosophy conceived simply as the science of knowledge 
cannot' furnish the genuine synthetic view, however important 
its function in that regard, because it cannot discuss in detail 
the structure, inward relationships, and contents of our 
knowledges. 

Thus the call becomes urgent for such a reconstruction of 
our sciences as Schelling conceived under the name of specu- 
lative physics, or more broadly considered, of Naturphilosophies 



THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 83 

It should exist alongside of science, in no wise displacing it or 
altering the course of scientific advance. It would renounce en- 
tirely the effort at discovery which is proper to science, and 
would take the duly authenticated results of science without 
debate. It would restore, however, the relation to philosophy 
from which science abstracts as much as possible, and would 
also aim to bring into closer accord the viewpoints of the 
special sciences. Working from this standpoint and in this 
interest, it would attempt a transvaluation of scientific values, 
by which the abstractness of science would be overcome so far 
as may be, and the whole system of knowledge interpreted 
in conscious relation to the concrete universal which vivifies 
that system. 

It does not admit of doubt that the results issuing from 
such a treatment of our knowledge will fall far short, in point 
of coherence and clearness, of the splendid structure of our 
special sciences. If proposed in place of the latter it would be 
chimerical and absurd, and its success in displacing them, if 
such a thing were conceivable, would be an almost unmitigated 
evil. But there remains a certain field which neither our con- 
temporary sciences nor our contemporary philosophy properly 
cultivate, in which much must be done if we are to learn the 
larger meaning of our enormous empirical accumulations of 
today. The warrant for the existence of a metaphysical re- 
valuation of the structure of physical science is purely specu- 
lative, but speculative in that better sense in which the centml 
motive of all genuine science is speculative. 

8uch a Xaturpliilosophie is of course not entirely non-ex- 
istent today. We have excellent philosophical criticisms and 
estimations of various fundamental doctrines in science. The 
range and meaning of atomism, for instance, has been search- 
ingly discussed. We fail, however, in point of thorough sys- 
tematic treatment over the entire field. The work is stu- 
pendous, of course, and since the downfall of the Begelian phi- 
osophy in Germany there has been a want of confidence in 



84 THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 

systematic effort in philosophy. The history of philosophy 
and epistemological criticism have absorbed the attention of 
snch as work in this field. It is greatly to be desired, how- 
ever, that men examine more carefully the nature of the prob- 
lem attempted by XatiuyMlosophie^ and see if it is not sound, 
genuine, and even insistent; and then inquire further, to see 
if the reasons for its relative failure a hundred years ago are 
such as to interpose an insuperable barrier against any success 
for the undertaking in the changed conditions of our modern 
time. 

Is it not absurd to suppose that the efforts of a brilliant but 
erratic writer of that unscientific time, trained largely in 
theology and Fichtean Wissenschaftslehre, and Avriting him- 
self out before the age of thirty under the pressure of the neces- 
sity of preparing material for his academic classes, material 
Avhich was immediately published almost without change — is it 
not absurd that these should stand as the high water mark of 
the speculative treatment of natural science ? And ought the 
imperfections and want of information and of caution which 
are aj)parent in Schelling's hastily written pages to be allowed 
to discredit throughout all time for fair and thoughtful men 
the elaboration of the problem connected with his name? No 
doubt the work is a difficult one, and will require the co- 
operation and criticism of hundreds of men, and the rich in- 
formation provided by the entire mass of science rather than 
by one precocious brain, but in any case the problem should 
not be prejudiced by faulty execution on the part of its first 
significant student. 

For not only is the problem legitimate. It is also true that 
the nature of the relative failure of these writers is such as 
to prompt to new effort. We have shown that Kant and Schel- 
ling blended good work with bad in such a way as to indicate 
the problem, and perhaps the general direction of the solution, 
but by no means to recommend the particular doctrines which 
they developed. We have seen, however, that the theories 



THE PHYSICS OF IDEALISM. 85 

which they maintained, and which have since appeared so im- 
perfect and unsatisfactory in the light either of logical analy- 
sis or of scientific advance, were in part not legitimate or 
necessary consequences of their guiding principles. Idealism 
in philosophy does not force its devotee to such a theory of 
the construction of matter as that of Schelling, even though it 
does urge for a revaluing of physical conceptions in essentially 
the interest which he was serving. Much of his speculation 
was ultra vires, in the judgment even of those who respect the 
philosophical tribunal. Its partial annulment, then, by the 
higher court of subsequent philosophical opinion need create no 
suspicion as to the general propriety and jurisdiction of the 
court of Naturphilo sophie. 

It is further true that the failure of these men is only par- 
tial. The work which they founded is not science, it is true v 
and no work of similar character could ever profess to perform 
the function of science, at any rate while the realm of human 
knowledge is organized as it now is. But neither does it 
claim to do so. For bridging the chasm which seems to sepa- 
rate the theory of knowledge from the results of knowledge, 
however, they offered important suggestions, and the guiding 
principles which determined their thought can be taken into 
the work of philosophical reconstruction at the present day. 




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